Armchair selector: An Australian winter’s tale

Australia’s 75 run win in Dominica secured a 2-0 series victory, their second consecutive series win. They have now not lost a Test since their seven run defeat against New Zealand at Hobart. Unfortunately for them, they do not now play another Test until next winter. Obviously they do not entirely control the relevant parts of the Future Tours Programme, but I do think that Cricket Australia may have missed a trick by not trying to schedule something more than five ODIs for the summer. Despite their victories, we have seen some clear gaps in the side recently and there is really nothing to be done to repair them until what must be, for both Cricket Australia and the Australian public, alarmingly close to the 2013 Ashes. With that series in mind, this is how I see the current Australian side:continue reading part I and part II on the Armchair Selector…

Return of the Prince

I didn’t mention yesterday as I was rather busy, but Lancashire signed Ashwell Prince as the overseas player for the upcoming season. I’m glad we finally nailed down a player and I think the choice was a very good one. Prince has a decent first class average and did very well the first two times he played for us. The most important thing for us was to sign a decent batsman though. Looking at last year’s Division 1 averages, of the players who played at least five matches the highest Lancastrian is Luke Procter at number 24. He had a good season, but still barely averaged over 40 from seven matches. Contrast this to the D1 bowling averages where the top three who bowled at least 150 overs are Simon Kerrigan, Kyle Hogg and Glen Chapple, all of whom averaged under 20. Our batting was definitely where we needed to improve, and I’m pretty confident that we have done that.

The only drawback is that Prince might still play for South Africa during the second half of the season. (At the very least I’d expect him to be in the squad.) I’m sure it’s easier to sign a player who wants to impress his county’s selectors ahead of an English tour, but it is still not optimal to sign someone who has a decent chance of missing four or five matches near the end of the season. Of course, if he is selected for South Africa on the back of a shedload of runs for us in the first half of the Championship I think it would probably be worth it. I’m not worried about the possibility of getting him too used to English conditions either. It probably won’t hurt him, but England’s bowlers are rather better than anything he’ll face even in the first Division. There was a lot of moaning about Phil Hughes playing for Middlesex in 2009 and all that happened was that England got a good look at how he played and preceded to use that against him rather effectively. I don’t think Prince, or the other South African that signed up to play county cricket (whose name escapes me and I’m too lazy to look up), will fare much better for South Africa.

Why Phil Hughes should not be dropped

It has been suggested that Phil Hughes will be ‘rotated’ out of the Australian XI for the second test at Hobart. If there is a change it will almost certainly be either Hughes or the equally out of form Hussey to make way for all-rounder Daniel Christian. Hussey has already expressed unease at the prospect of rotation and has counselled Hughes not to change his game. Hussey appears to be worried he will be the one to miss out in a rotation policy and is trying to make sure it’s Hughes instead.

I hope it isn’t Hughes to go, however, I like having Hughes in the Australian side. A look at his career statistics and history shows why. His first class form is very impressive, but in tests overall he averages 36.13 with three centuries and three fifties. That’s six times he’s gone past fifty in thirty innings. Hughes’ career is based almost entirely on the second test of his career, in which he scored 115 and 160 against South Africa in Durban. It was only a decent series apart from that. He scored nought and 75 in his first test and 33 and 32 in the last test of the series before going to England for the 2009 Ashes. He fared poorly against shorter bowling in England and was dropped for the third test. (And announced it himself, on Twitter.) He was dropped to give him a chance to work on his technique, but he never really improved. He had one-off tests against Pakistan and New Zealand after the 2009 Ashes, but his best score in those two matches was 86* against New Zealand. Regardless of his failure to improve, the injury and subsequent dropping of Katich during the 2010/11 Ashes gave him a more permanent place.

Since his debut tour to South Africa Phil Hughes has scored just 633 runs at an average of 27.52. His lone century in that time was against a Sri Lankan ‘attack’ at Colombo a few months ago and he has passed fifty only three times. The only time he has done so against an international quality attack was his 88 in Jo’burg last month. His technique was lacking against in England in 2009 and he has never fixed those problems. His footwork is non-existent and he can only play the short ball in the sense that he can play it in the air to gully. And this is why I want him to stay in the side. I hope the selectors continue to look at his extremely impressive domestic form and drop Hussey instead because in 2013 I want to see him walk on to the pitch at Lord’s on an overcast July morning and face Jimmy Anderson with the new ball. I really, really want to see that.