While I agree that the selectors did a very poor job and Ponting is a fairly crappy captain, I submit the following evidence that
a) it can be hard to pick a team when you don't have much to choose from
and
b) it is a shitload harder to captain a team when your players aren't very good.
Lets compare the 2001 Ashes team- arguably the strongest team sent from these shores- to the 2009 Ashes team
2001- Slater, Hayden, Ponting (much better than 2009 by the way), S Waugh, M Waugh, Martyn, Gilchrist, Warne, Lee (roughly 20000 times better than the 2009 version), Gillespie, McGrath.
Some of the players left out of this team included players the calibre of Langer, Law, Bevan, Lehmann, Kasprowicz, Bichel and MacGill. All of whom would've walked into the Ashes teams in 2009.
Now, would that have been a difficult team to pick or captain? I'm pretty confident that my 3 year old daughter couldve captained that team to Ashes glory. The only player from 2009 that may- only may- have cracked the 2009 team was Clarke at the expense of Martyn (I'd stick with Martyn who was in his prime at the time and was awesome in that series). No one else would've even been mentioned at the selection table.
So when everyone bemoans Ponting and yes, even the selectors lets just think about how spoiled we have been for the last 20 years. Sure, they should've played a spinner in the last test but it's not like they left out Warne or MacGill. Sure they could've dropped Johnson or Hussey, but they didn't exactly have options like Kasper or Boof to go to.
I think it's fair to say that it's also slightly easier to toss the ball to the likes of McGrath, Gillespie and Warne as well as setting consistently attacking fields than the average crop we have today.
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Good points on the mediocrity of the squad Deevs. I find this fact to be even more reason why the selectors hould have picked at least 2 more players to bolster up the squad. Were they just cocky or did they really not have 17/18 players to choose to tour the UK?? Even if we were to blood a couple of young fellas, you needed to have a bigger squad for such an important series. Even that might 01 series squad is bigger than this years pitifully talented group. Hilditch needs to go I'm afraid and probably merv and Boony as well who are to busy running boozy tour groups instead of picking a good team/squad for the most important series in the 4 year cricketing cycle!
ReplyDeleteGet selectors who dont have agendas. Even a group of smart businessmen could make better decisions by looking at the stats and with information on the pitch. The whole Australian public knew who should have been picked except the selectors.
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