Room For Symonds in Aus test side?

[iamdavid]

^^ Katich England 2005? With Hussey killing it over there in county, after tearing up the ODIs?

Katich really didnt play as badly as you might think during that series, certainly no worse than Hayden/Clarke/Martyn/Gilchrist.
He played very good and in the match situation important knocks in 1st and 4th tests and luck really wasnt on his side (couple of ordinary calls, the one in the 4th test particularly crucial, plus he was on several occasions stranded with the tail and forced to hit out because of Gilchrist getting out so quick).

 

[Pup Clarke]

Is Ashley Noffke competely out of the picture or what?. Seems criminal that he hasn't played for Australia yet, is getting on a bit but have seen him bowl a couple of times and he looked fantastic

 

[Hoggy31]

Is Ashley Noffke competely out of the picture or what?. Seems criminal that he hasn't played for Australia yet, is getting on a bit but have seen him bowl a couple of times and he looked fantastic

Has had one decent season after a string of poor one's after his 2001 trip to England, would need to back it up this year to have any chance, there's a few bowlers ahead of him atm.

 

[Matt79]

Nah - it's the forum settings. Signatures are only shown once per page.

Grasping at straws, clearly not true. Witness this post and the previous one by me.

 

[iamdavid]

So there was discussion of the fact Katich had struggled in English conditions and discussion of Hussey's blindingly obvious fine form before the Test serious started.

He'd hardly struggled in English conditions, had been a glutenous run-scorer in county cricket and on his previous Ashes tour he played one match, making 15 before he was bowled leaving a great inswinger from Gough and 0* in the second dig.

 

[Prince EWS]

Is Ashley Noffke competely out of the picture or what?. Seems criminal that he hasn't played for Australia yet, is getting on a bit but have seen him bowl a couple of times and he looked fantastic

He's fairly inconsistent from season to season, gets injured at the wrong times and fell into a bad form slump when he had a decent shot at things. He was named in the most recent Australia A squad which was a bit of a surprise to many, but he bowled very well for Qld last season.

 

[NUFAN]

Is Ashley Noffke competely out of the picture or what?. Seems criminal that he hasn't played for Australia yet, is getting on a bit but have seen him bowl a couple of times and he looked fantastic

If it was 10 years ago and Paul Reiffel got injured then yeah he would be in with a chance. I can't remember did he get a CA contract?

Good player, he'd be close to making an Australia A side.

 

[Prince EWS]

Grasping at straws, clearly not true. Witness this post and the previous one by me.

I rest my case!

 

[Matt79]

Katich really didnt play as badly as you might think during that series, certainly no worse than Hayden/Clarke/Martyn/Gilchrist.
He played very good and in the match situation important knocks in 1st and 4th tests and luck really wasnt on his side (couple of ordinary calls, the one in the 4th test particularly crucial, plus he was on several occasions stranded with the tail and forced to hit out because of Gilchrist getting out so quick).

He'd hardly struggled in English conditions, had been a glutenous run-scorer in county cricket and on his previous Ashes tour he played one match, making 15 before he was bowled leaving a great inswinger from Gough and 0* in the second dig.

Yeah, fair points.

I thought it was an error for both him and Clarke to be retained all the way through the series, and that Clarke clearly had a bigger upside for the team, but maybe I'm not now sufficiently taking off my Twenty20 hindsight...

 

[Richard]

That's not true though. I clearly remember the Sky commentators (Botham in particular IIRC) mentioning their disbelief that Hussey wasn't in the test team virtually every ODI match, and the Channel 7 guys back here were making similar comments. And the weak links who appeared to be the logical candidates to make way were Katich, and to a lesser extent Clarke.

And I also remember an article in the Australian "Inside Cricket" magazine before the tour commenced which contained an interview of Katich where he said he was keen to go because his previous tour had been a disaster and he was keen to show that had been an abberation.

So there was discussion of the fact Katich had struggled in English conditions and discussion of Hussey's blindingly obvious fine form before the Test serious started.

And I don't dispute Katich had been treated hideously in the past, but he got slack that he didn't, in 2005, deserve because of those previous unfairnesses, IMO.

Katich hasn't struggled over here, though, far from it - he scored heavily in the tour-games in 2001, and performed brilliantly for Durham and anyone else he played for in the domestic game thereafter.

Yeah, he failed in his 1 innings (when he got an absolute pearler from Darren Gough) in the Tests, but that's hardly reason for condemnation. EDIT: Hoitink's beaten me to it.

People say "why isn't he in the Test team" when players have ODI success ATT - people said it about Nick Knight and Graeme Hick and number of times in their careers. Often despite there being no openings, people said "surely he's got to be in the Test team?"

Katich was no weak-link going into 2005, he performed superbly at Lord's, and was simply worked-over by some of times quite magnificent bowling. The decision to drop Martyn after that (and the bad decisions) was stupid enough, to have ditched Katich too would've been too much. At least by the time he was dropped he actually deserved to be, as he should have cashed-in on West Indies and it was a shame he didn't. EDIT 2: Hoitink's beaten me to it again!

 

[Matt79]

I rest my case!

I see the sigs...

EDIT: Now I don't.

Hope someone isn't abusing their GM powers to win a silly little argument...

 

[Prince EWS]

I see the sigs...

I only see the first one. Strange indeed.

 

[iamdavid]

Yeah, fair points.

I thought it was an error for both him and Clarke to be retained all the way through the series, and that Clarke clearly had a bigger upside for the team, but maybe I'm not now sufficiently taking off my Twenty20 hindsight...

Hmm, really I dont think you can point finger at selectors too much for what happened.
Katich was an established test player he'd just made a great hundred in New Zealand, Martyn had been the best batsman in test cricket the previous 18 months, Clarke had just won the Allan Border medal and was established. Plus none of them were really playing that badly those three all made vital runs in the first test, you couldnt really justify dropping any of them. It was just great bowling.

 

[Matt79]

The second part of me seeing it as an error was that Hussey and Hodge couldn't get a game... but yeah, the stability of the team had been considered a key ingredient in its success as well.

 

[Prince EWS]

I see the sigs...

EDIT: Now I don't.

Hope someone isn't abusing their GM powers to win a silly little argument...

Haha, I certainly can't remove your sig. And even if I somehow could, "Last edited by Prince EWS" would appear at the bottom. Maybe they appear until you refresh the page?

 

[Matt79]

I see the sigs...

EDIT: Now I don't.

Hope someone isn't abusing their GM powers to win a silly little argument...

I only see the first one. Strange indeed.

Experiments over the last couple of posts reveal that sigs on multiple posts on the one page of a thread are there when you have that page open, but if you go to another page or thread and then return, only the first post still has the sig.

I think I've dragged this off-topic enough for now...

 

[howardj]

"It is an interesting one for sure. I would imagine that Symmo would start," Ponting told reporters at a camp in Coolum today when asked about the competition between the two all-rounders.

linky

 

[Richard]

I see the sigs...

EDIT: Now I don't.

Hope someone isn't abusing their GM powers to win a silly little argument...

FWIW for me sigs appear only on the first post by that poster of the page. Plus any post - on the first view by the editer only - after an edit.

Think that's the standard, but maybe you have the option to change it to every post. You certainly have the option to disable sigs altogether.

 

[vic_orthdox]

Matt79. When you make a Quick Reply, it will always appear straight away, no matter how many times you post on a page. However, if you reload the page, it will return to the forum default of only once per page.

 

[Matt79]

Matt79. When you make a Quick Reply, it will always appear straight away, no matter how many times you post on a page. However, if you reload the page, it will return to the forum default of only once per page.

Yeah, just worked that out.

I see Ponting said Symonds would bat at 7 if Watson played as well. So would Gilly be at 6, or are is he suggesting three specialist bowlers plus Watson, Symonds and Clarke, do people think?

I hope its not the latter... In fact I hope its only a hypothetical full stop.