Alternative XI: New South Wales escapees

30% of all Australian First-Class contracted players have their origins in New South Wales.  However, the frequency with which players have departed Sydney for Sheffield Shield opportunities is quite alarming.

This isn’t a new phenomenon: for decades New South Wales have produced players who have achieved more for adopted states – either money or opportunity has lured players the likes of Sir Donald Bradman, Jason Arnberger, Allan Border and Jeff Thomson from the powder blue.

Now, with New South Wales sitting at the bottom of the Sheffield Shield table, it pays to examine the best players the state can’t call upon any more.  Any Australian call-ups since their departure and total First Class averages are also listed.

Position	Player	State	FC average	Call-ups
1	PJ Hughes	SA	45.51	Test, ODI
2	EJM Cowan	TAS	39.93	Test
3	TLW Cooper	SA	30.40
4	PJ Forrest	QLD	32.56	ODI
5	UT Khawaja	QLD	42.90	Test, ODI
6	JW Hastings	VIC	24.75 bat, 25.00 ball	Test, ODI, T20
7	AW O’Brien	SA	27.75 bat
8	JJ Krejza	TAS	25.19 bat, 49.59 ball	Test, ODI
9	JM Mennie	SA	23.17 ball
10	BT Cockley	WA	29.98 ball	ODI squad
11	JM Bird	TAS	16.18 ball	Test
12	MG Hogan	WA	28.66 ball

Shane Watson sells himself short

The news that Shane Watson will be self-limiting his bowling should come as no great surprise.  He has done so before, many times, with the first occurrence dating back nearly a decade to the year before the infamous haunted-mansion Ashes Tour of 2005.

Watson, despite his bulging physique and American Dad!-style chin, just isn’t made for bowling long spells.  He sends the ball down well and over the past decade has increased his movement both through the air and off the pitch.  He is one of the few part-timers with the ability to change a match.  However, the forty-eight overs he sent down in Hobart have likely put him out of the rest of the International summer.

In response, Watson elected to remove himself semi-permanently from the Australian attack.  This comes in spite of the rather extreme circumstances of Hobart.  Those four dozen overs were by far the most he’s bowled in a Test:  before Bellerive, the most Watson had ever bowled in five-day competition was 35 overs at Nagpur during Jason Krezja’s match.

It’s damning for Watson that rather than moderating his bowling, he has turned his back on the leather altogether.  Not so much for his character but his Test career, because flinging the leather is perhaps the one thing that differentiates him from his “competition” for a position in Australia’s top order. 

While said competition is hardly beating at the door with force, Watson has voluntarily removed his single most attractive, marketable skill.  Selectors make selections based on the amount of currency held by players: players gain those bargaining chips by accumulating runs or wickets, by boasting a legacy or a posing unique threat to the opposition.  Only two years from being anointed the next great one, Watson has none of these.

It has been nearly 2 ½ years since he made his second – and last, til now – Test ton.  Over that span, his average has been 35.7, near enough his career number of 37.  If one was to hazard a guess at what replacement-level at Test level was, 35 might well be it: capable of some excellence and a shedload of utter mediocrity.

Whether any putative successors could actually reach this theoretical replacement level is very much up for debate.  Usman Khawaja seems to have first dibs on Mike Hussey’s vacated no. 6 position, leaving Watson’s challengers the likes of of Alex Doolan, Joe Burns and Glenn Maxwell.  Not only does each of these players have some domestic currency to present the selectors, but each also hints at the unique promise of future glories.  Watson, with his pedestrian batsmanship and now shorn of his bowling, presents an argument based heavily upon incumbency and seniority.

His decision, reached in harmony with coach Mickey Arthur, robs Watson of some of his cricketing value.  It leaves him alone at the crease with only his guile to protect him.  If ever a thought should scare Australian cricket fans - and the player himself - it is the thought of Shane Watson left to survive on only his wits.

Simon Katich retired because Australia wanted him to

Simon Katich announced his retirement from First Class cricket earlier this week, ending a career that began when Mark Taylor and Paul Keating occupied the most coveted offices in the country. He leaves with a reputation as a hardworking player who moved up the order as his career progressed, starting at six and finishing facing the new pill.

Katich also leaves with a reputation for spirit; something which would surprise those who watched his Test debut during the 2001 Ashes series. Apart from his crablike wander across the stumps in playing each delivery, the most recognisable incidents from a long and quite distinguished career involve his 2009 bust-up with Michael “Bingle” Clarke in the sheds and his press conference last year, where he said what others dared not upon his axing from the Cricket Australia contract list.

Were he still opening the Australian innings with Shane Watson or David Warner, it's doubtable Katich would have retired. He felt he still had more to offer the Australian team and his stats backed him up. Western Australia certainly thought he had something left, as they wanted him to play 2012-13 for the Warriors.  The pay's also pretty good. 

Courtesy: crickblog.com

 The enmity with Clarke contributed to Katich's replacement and almost certainly left him jaded and fed up with the politics inherent in Australia's only truly national game. Although maturing, Simon Katich had earned his place ... only to be dropped simply because of his age.

Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey fight the same battle every time they step onto the field. Both are older than Katich and appear near the end, but have no firm plans for retirement. When either fails, a gestalt Salomé appears, composed of a collective press, who screams persistent nonsense about ageing heads on salvers. The promise of youth is decried, a glorious future is prophesied – without admission that promise is all many Australian youngsters have to offer.

In a world culture where stardom starts early and young is better, Australia's sporting hierarchy leads the world. Since the country's failure at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, Australia has prided itself on world's best youth development; in cricket, this has manifested in the once-vaunted Australian Cricket Academy, an offshoot of the Australian Institute of Sport.

In Aussie Rules football, the dominant sport, the average age of last year's Premiers, Geelong, was 26.6 years old and considered almost supremely old. The year before, the average age of the Collingwood's Premiership side was 24. This led the expansion Gold Coast Suns to select a squad with average age of just 21.2 years last term. Players are often given only one chance and if renewal is required, players at age 24-26 are the first to go. Precious few delisted players are later re-drafted; an anonymous teen's promise now supersedes proven capabilities of the known foot soldier.

The trend has begun to reverse somewhat as veteran players like James Podsiadly and Orren Stephenson are drafted for short-term impact and clubs countenance that there is life in the lower leagues past the age of 21, but this  psychologically-straitjacketing desire for youth still prevails.

Australian football clubs have cottoned on that fans want one of two things: wins, or hope for the future. If you aren't challenging for the title, you regenerate the entire playing list on the back of high draft picks and hard work. Players emerge to stardom early, destroy their bodies and retire to the paddock of fond memories by age 31. With the success of young teams like Hawthorn and Essendon, the Australian public is prepared to sacrifice mid-term results – wholesale – in the ostensible guise of long-term progress.

This simply doesn't work on the cricket field. The best players should represent their country until their position becomes untenable. Due to the persistent averageness displayed by Phil “Snicker” Hughes, Usman Khawaja, Chris Lynn et al., Katich, Hussey and Ponting should have been left to judge themselves. Creating space for young players to grow is a ridiculous argument – if the players can't dominate the Shield, there's little or no reason to suggest they will perform consistently at Test level. Adam Gilchrist, Justin Langer and Glenn McGrath called time at the right moment – why should we treat Hussey and Ponting any different? Plus, although the dollars on offer cloud the decision, who else is better to judge?

Some athletes pick the correct time to go, while others hang on too long – here, cricketers could take a lesson from AFL players – but to simply remove Katich from national contention was ill-advised and affronting. At worst, a perilous drop in form deserves the oft-cited “tap on the shoulder”; Katich didn't receive even this much dignity in June 2011.

At least on Monday, his announcement carried a nobility not afforded by his former employers.

Shaun Marsh - the galling truth

On Monday, we shared a graphic detailing Shaun Marsh's horrendous form against India.  His slump has become epic - the only slump that hangs about as much in the modern memory was Ken Rutherford's near career-devastating debut series where the teen prodigy was worked over by a West Indies attack in their absolute pomp.

With Marsh, not only is his footwork weighed down but also his confidence.  In isolation, his batting average of 31 after ten Test innings could be plenty worse.  However, he finds himself in a situation where all around him have made multiple scores, making his lack of runs an even more glaring tribute to self-doubt.  But how bad is his form slump?  To find out, w need to frame his scores contextually.

Unfortunately for Marsh, a wide-angle lens does him no favours.  Each member of the current Australian top order's batting average had exemplified elements of stabilisation by the tenth innings; by each player's twentieth knock their averages had effectively stabilised.  Mike Hussey is of course the outrider after starting his career being exceptionally hard to dismiss.

 As one would expect, batting averages tend to steady as the number of innings increases - firstly because you obtain more consistent results and secondly because the player has established themselves as a Test quality player (or not).  Trends are easy to spot in such graphs - and Marsh's seems likely to steady at around 30, significantly below the Test batsman's Mendoza line of 40.

Perhaps it's not about youth, it's about situation.  Taking all batsmen as equal, the following graph plots Marsh's average since debut with all those batsmen Australia have used.

As you can see, Marsh's form has slipped below that of the particularly unlamented Phil Hughes and even below the spectacularly out of form Brad Haddin.  So it's not circumstance either.  Marsh simply has plumbed the depths of form not seen since Dean Jones in Pakistan.  It's time to move on.

All averages include the first innings from the current Test in Adelaide, but not the second.

How good can Australia be?

The cricket world waits on a strong Australia. In dark times for the masses, hope is required and, for the first time since 2009, Australians wait expectantly on youth. At that time, that promise rested on Peter Siddle, Mitchell Johnson and the slightly rounded shoulders and plate-sized eyes of Phil Hughes. Now, two years hence, w are intrigued by Michael Beer and happy about Usman Khawaja's Test debut. His bright 30 at the Sydney Test wasn't outstanding, but a fillip for youth development in the country.

Target 2014

Whether Australia's 3-1 defeat at the hands of the Old Enemy doesn't really matter even though the gut feeling is that Australia's best side hasn't ever been as outplayed as convincingly as they were during this series. The Australia defeated yesterday was comprehensively outgunned and more disturbingly, out-thought.

According to Greg Baum of The Age, this was Australian cricket at it's deepest depths, it's perihelion, so heads must roll. Fair enough - but which ones? When examining the players who didn't perform - Hilfenhaus, Johnson, Hughes and Ponting chief among them - there aren't adequate candidates awaiting in first class cricket to replace them. There's undoubtedly the talent but it's either too young or too old to be considered ripe for representing their country.

The objective now must be to qualify for the inaugural Test World Championship mooted for 2014. It's only three years away and therefore it must be at the forefront of Cricket Australia's planning - to fail to qualify would be an embarrassment on a par with Canada failing to qualify for an Ice-Hockey tournament or New Zealand being eliminated in the first round of the Rugby World Cup. Only the four best Test-playing nations will be entered into that competition and it's now nearly impossible to argue that Australia form part of that quartet.

But all is not lost. To think back, four years ago England were humiliated to a similar extent by an Australian team no longer great but simply very good. Of the current Ashes tourists, seven played in the 2007 debacle. Once the correct path for regrowth is established for a nation, the regreening of their playing stocks can occur relatively quickly, especially with the amount of cricket currently played. In the next two years there are nineteen Tests against everyone from Bangladesh to South Africa and the "New Enemy" India, enough for youngsters to establish themselves and develop their own techniques coping mechanisms.

Of the seven Englishmen who returned to the antipodes this year, the only trundlers were James Anderson and Monty Panesar and Monty didn't play a match. It's the bowling stocks which needed refreshment and that's a situation with which Australia can readily identify. Ben Hilfenhaus and Mitchell Johnson must have exhausted the selectors patience by now and with Ryan Harris willing, though physically unable to be relied upon, the search for new-ball bowlers must begin in earnest, bowlers who can put the ball in threatening areas time and again. All of Peter George, Josh Hazelwood and James Pattinson have the talent and both Clarke and Ponting have shown they are serviceable leaders of fast men. There is hope for Michael Beer as the spinner designate and the sooner he is flown to India to learn from the great Indian spinners, the healthier Australian cricket will be.

More troubling is the lack of application displayed by the Australian batsman this series. Every single player got out with ill-advised shots and to a lack of patience. With questions still remaining over Shane Watson's position at opener and the longevity of Ponting and Hussey, their replacements must be young and given time to grow into their roles rather than shoehorned into position and told to perform. The focus isn't now crushing Bangladesh or beating Sri Lanka in 2011, it is ensuring that each player elevated to national player experiences the game in all conditions against the very best players the world has to offer. If a player - especially a batsman - has a future as a Test cricketer there is a good argument that they shouldn't be bothering with Twenty20. If T20s aren't played then enough space can be created in a player's schedule which could be used to hone their Test game further.

If Australia misses a Test World Championship in three years' time, the sport risks irrelevancy in the entire Pacific region. New Zealand hasn't been anywhere near the right path since several of their stars defected to the rebel ICL and Australia's slide into sub-mediocrity has been slow and painful. Change is needed, though not necessarily in personnel but in approach.

Why they weren't picked

With the Australian side whittled down to thirteen as the first Test approaches, suddenly Callum Ferguson and (probably) Usman Khawaja have been left on the sidelines. The selectors have opted to stay with the same six batsmen who have led Australia to their current World ranking of fourth. The reason is simple: although the middle order has struggled mightily and watching Mike Hussey now reminds us all of David Boon's last, tedious, eyeball-stripping innings, neither the South Australian nor his younger New South Welsh counterpart have really made that final spot their own.

To look at Australia's last Test XI is to see mediocrity at several positions, namely in the middle order and the spin-bowling department. The team defeated in India will change, with Tasmanian Xavier Doherty replacing Nathan Hauritz on the strength of one good Sheffield Shield match and one outstanding ODI: his First Class figures aren't particularly impressive but he's performed well at the right time and thus has received the call.

The batsmen, however, are a different matter. Both Ferguson and Khawaja have had several chances recently to write their names in ink across the Aussie middle order yet have failed to do so; last week's paltry Australia A showings were the final nail in their collective coffins. Gone are the days of 1994-95 where Australia A were perhaps the second-best side in the World and this was proved emphatically at Bellerive as both "Next Best Things" surrendered their wickets to the English attack.

Khawaja or Ferguson would do well to heed the exploits of a young Damien Martyn. During the 1990s, an Australian had to force the selectors collective hands both with mountains of runs and with scores at the right time. The most striking example of this was in the early days of the West Indies 1992-93 tour. West Australian tyro Martyn was making runs for fun in the-then Mercantile Mutual Cup, in Shield matches and against a full-strength Windies pace battery in three separate matches. His front-foot slashes of Ambrose and Bishop to the extra cover boundary on a pacy WACA pitch were indelibly marked on my thirteen year-old brain as the most exciting cricket shots I'd ever seen. When the squad lists were submitted for the first Test at the 'Gabba, Martyn was there alongside an in-form Australian top six each of whom has claim to being an all-time great of the game. Martyn kept making runs and both popular and selector opinion was swayed immutably in his favour with a quickfire 36 against the tourists at Bellerive for the Australian XI. He made the team at the expense of Dean Jones.

It wasn't so much the weight of Martyn's runs that ensured his spot, nor the manner in which he scored them although his four-day Strike Rate nearing 100 was undoubtedly impressive. Damien Martyn was selected because he'd showed his readiness for the big time by making crucial runs in the right spots. When needing runs to cement his position, that one innings for Australian XI made not picking him a popular impossibility. The same stories apply with Matthew Elliott in 1997, Adam Gilchrist in 1999 and even Phil Hughes' 2008-09 domestic season: they made so many runs at the right time that Michael Slater, Ian Healy and Matthew Hayden were dumped so that Australia could progress. With mediocre recent form, neither Khawaja nor Ferguson have shown their mettle, posing the question: are they really ready? Are they ready to make the step up to Test match level?

As it happens, Usman Khawaja has been called up as an emergency replacement for a struggling Michael Clarke so we may well find out if he is ready anyway. Should Mike Hussey fail in Brisbane, we may find out how good a training-ground the Sheffield Shield really is. With many puzzling selections (and non-selections) over the past two years, it appears that Australia's selection panel has decided to award caps to guys they hope can do the job rather than to players they know can do the job. That's not their fault as there are more question marks over the strength of the Australian domestic competition than at any time since Packer - there isn't the same quality that inspires complete confidence in their delivering, so the next best thing is to plump for hope and call it development. What they can be pilloried for is the inconsistency with which they've applied this policy.

Neither Khawaja, Ferguson, Cameron White, Peter George, Mitch Starc or even Golden Child Steve Smith has forced the selection panel's to pick them even though Australia cries out for young talent to replace their ageing and tired top guns, now less howitzers and more derringers. Perhaps now we see more clearly why throughout the noughties so many Australian debutants have been aged in their late-20s and early-30s - the younger players just haven't had the responsibility that creates personal growth from an early age and so haven't taken it upon themselves to ensure their selection.