luckyeddie said:
Complete and utter codswollop. You seem to be the only person who believes it. I presume therefore that it would be more appropriate to have automatic selection to representative sides based on a formula based entirely on statistics, thus doing away with selection committees entirely?
This is cricket we are talking about, not baseball or some other plagiarised statistics-oriented 'sport' .
By your method, England's test side would include...
Mark Ramprakash
Jonathan Batty
Matthew Wood
Ryan Sidebottom
and Graeme Swann
So you're a Ramprakash fan, eh?
You seem to slightly misinterpret me (though you are right about one thing - I rate Ramprakash far higher than most do).
The main point I am attempting to make is that as far as selection is concerned, you can't argue with stats garnered
at that level of the game. So for Test selection you can't argue with Test statistics. For ODI selection you can't argue with ODI statistics. For selection at Club First XI level, you can't argue with Club First XI statistics.
It is less true (although nowhere near as much as some seem to like to believe) when selecting someone who hasn't played in the last match at that level. I will use the example of domestic-First-Class to Test as a don't-complicate-things-further-than-neccesary thing.
For selecting a Test side, if you have a vacant berth, you need to look at two things when considering a player. First - has he played much Test-cricket before? If he has and he's failed, you need to think twice about selecting him. If he hasn't played at Test level, you can only judge him on his domestic-First-Class statistics - of the past two seasons especially.
I really don't know why a statistics-based selection would include Graeme Swann - not one of the most impressive performers, nor what anyone would call consistent. Wood even worse - one season he's averaging over 50, next less than 20. He's never strung two decent seasons together. Sidebottom has a very good dFC record, but I really fail to understand how he's got it. I fully expect it to change after leaving Headingley.
You must differentiate between "statistics"and "one good season". In the case of many who are in the "the selectors don't trust county cricket" brigade, the latter is the case and their exclusion is entirely justifiable to me.
The term "statistics" is bandied-around far too often. It can cover virtually anything. All too often, people seem to fail to acknowledge that Test averages are in fact statistics, even though this is a logic-baffling argument.
I am not saying anyone really thinks that, just that some terminology often used suggests this.
As for selection - while selection should be done on statistics, you still need someone (ie - a human-being) to sort it all out. The notion of abolishing selection comittees is a bizarre one.