I can't work out why I'm not on the board of selectors, either

I don't really follow any cricket opinion, so I'm not sure whether this has been said before (although I'd suspect it has): it's time for Michael Hussey to go.

Now, don't get me wrong here - I'm definitely a Hussey fan. I'm predisposed to liking him because he's Western Australian, like me, and I'm also fond because (when he's on form) he's a dynamic, exciting player to watch, and he has a great sportsmanlike attitude. And I should point out I'm not calling for a metaphorical "Off with his head!" the way I did for about the last five years of Matthew Hayden's career. However, it is definitely time for Hussey to prove he's still got the goods.

Statistically, he's still got it - at an average of over 50 in Test cricket, you'd think his spot well justified . . . if that statistic was all you were going on. But the fact of the matter is, Hussey's current average is based on the fact that he hasn't managed to entirely dilute the extremely high average he built at the start of his Test career, with this recent series of ever-declining poor performances.

Since I'm not a selector, I'm not going to back this up with precise statistics. But anyone who's had more than a passing interest in Australian cricket over the last 5 years will know that Hussey started his career at top speed, and seemed like never letting up. His average was astronomical at above 80 for the first 2 years or so, he was a solidly high-performing, freely-scoring player whom you could depend on to come through with a big score when the chips were down, in both forms of the game (that's right, folks - there's only two forms according to me, and I will never believe that the bludgeon-circus is anything more than that :P ).

But in the last year and a half, this average has seen a disatrous decline. I don't have the exact number, but I saw his average for the past couple of seasons on the TV the other day, which is in the 30s. (In fact, mathematically you can work this out for yourself; at the beginning of 2008 his average was just over 80; it's now in the low 50s). Correspondingly, of course, his general game has suffered. He doesn't seem to be able to pick the ball well, is not moving his feet how he should be, and just generally looks awkward at the crease. He doesn't look confident the way he used to - in fact he now bears more than a passing resemblance to a tail ender in his general body language and demeanour.

Clearly, something needs to be done. Regardless of his past performances, it can't be denied any longer - a batsman with an average in the early 30s has no place in the Australian team, and this is essentially what Hussey has become. And yet, for a year and half, he's been allowed to maintain his spot in the team.

Of course, every player over the course of his career will go through slumps in form. And of course, the best action to take under this circumstance is to back your player the whole way - let him work on his game, build his confidence again, and hopefully he'll be back on top. But the point is, is a year and a half really a "slump"?

I would argue it's not, and here we come to my real beef with the board of selectors.

It's a two part issue, really - the second part I'll get to in a minute, using the spiritual son of another West Australian, Damien Martyn, to make my point. The first part of my criticism is that we allow our established players to get away with too much in the way of poor form, and always have done.



From letting Tubs hang around because we didn't trust Steve Waugh to captain well enough, to allowing the slow death of any admiration for Matthew Hayden before the final mercy kill, we simply don't hold the players with secure spots in the team accountable enough for their performance. Someone like Hayden is allowed to maintain his spot in the team by dint of throwing out the odd double century in between a series of mediocre starts and half-starts.

It's hard to argue against the inclusion of players who have consistently been a part of such a successful team. But sometimes the bigger picture needs to be looked at. In this case, the bigger picture is making sure that Australia's young up-and-coming players get a chance to cut their teeth as part of a successful team, and giving them the opportunity to get a good few years of experience behind them while they're still young and in their prime. It's this technique that allows us to have Ricky Ponting ascending to captaincy at the reasonably young age of 30 but still with 10 years of experience behind him.

It's hard to imagine when this will ever happen again; even Michael Clarke was 23 on debut. The next time such a thing might occur is with Phil Hughes, that is, if they ever let him back in the side.

Which brings us neatly to part two of the two-part problem with Australian cricket: while once you have proved yourself to the selectors you seemingly don't have to worry about performing well, actually getting a permanent spot in the team is virtually impossible without a superhuman effort of top scoring.

Witness Phil Hughes: an exciting young player, indubitably talented but very inexperienced, is picked for the Ashes series. He underperforms in the first two tests and is dropped like a gun.

Now, quite obviously, he had a few issues with his game, and he wasn't performing well. On the other hand, he arguably wasn't performing any worse than Hussey has been for some time now. This is the same thing we've seen time and again - most notably with Damien Martyn, who was dropped for a poor start to his career and then exiled for 6 years on the basis of turning in a (admittedly, abysmally) bad performance in a day full of bad performances.

Now, maybe this is a positive thing for Hughes. Maybe it gives him the chance to straighten out his technique before throwing him in at the deep end once again. But I'm prepared to bet that he's champing at the bit to get back in there and prove himself.

It might have been nice to give him the opportunity - especially when the rest of the more experienced team have been largely underperforming for this series. The way things are going, we're going to have to play the game of our lives to win this fifth and final test. Maybe a young and enthusiastic opener with the full backing and confidence of his board could have made a bigger impact on some of the other games in the series, and then we wouldn't even be in this position.

Bringing it back to Hussey - why couldn't he be dropped in favour of giving a younger player some experience? Surely time to rest, recuperate and refocus is what Hussey needs? Leaving him out of the team for a few matches is not enough - he needs to be told, in the same way Phil Hughes was told - "There are some issues with your game. Sort them out, and we'll see what we can do about the selection." Time away from the high pressure of international matches, and the added incentive of using domestic games to prove himself able to be in the Australian team are what Hussey needs - so we can see a return to form of one of the most exciting players of recent times.


I await my call from the ACB, or whatever they're calling themselves these days, with an immediate offer of a job. I'm sure one will be forthcoming, don't you?

Making a start

I've finally taken the plunge, and started a blog. I've been thinking about it for a while, but haven't actually gone ahead with it. Mostly this is because although I am manifestly incredibly witty and wellspoken (written?), I'm also nobody particularly important, have never done anything exceptional, and don't even have a specific theme in mind to give the blog focus and cohesion.

Therefore the only reason I'd be starting one is from pure self-aggrandisement, and while naturally that's a good enough reason for just about anybody, I still wasn't sure it was really enough impetus. Add to the mix that I am simultaneously very hardworking (at work) and indolent (in leisure time), and you don't really have a good combination for even starting the thing - let alone continuing to write with any regularity.

The thing that finally inspired me to jump into the exciting world of blogging (you must imagine a gently ironic tone just there) was that I managed to find the solution to a Microsoft Outlook 2007 problem that the internets had been totally unable to assist me with. Not anywhere in the hits for the (fairly precise) keywords that I googled was there any a straightforward answer what is a confusing but in the end, fairly straightforward problem.

And so I thought to myself, this is where a blog could actually have a point. If I have a blog, and I write about my solution to this problem using those same fairly precise keywords, surely at some point in the future another lost victim of Microsoft's daring leap back to the dark ages will come across my answer, thereby saving themselves 2 hours and endless amounts of trawling through onto the (shock! horror!) second or third pages of Google results, only to find forum after forum of this question not being answered.

Of course, I'd still actually have to write the post, but at the moment, it's a start.