Right, so players whose selection you agree with & fail and you can't excuse them fast enough; players elevated against your wisdom are "errors".
Surely, even you can see that selecting players who perform ahead of players who did not wasn't what dragged England down for years and years? I mean, it's not just me, is it?
Yet again, you're twisting things. What dragged England down for yonks, and what I disagree vehemently with, is writing players off after 1 or 2 failures. I want to see lots of failures before I write someone off. I want players to be given a proper chance at the top level once they're given a chance, and not chop and change between players with just a game or two's notice.
Surely even you can see that, in 1999/2000, none of Vaughan, Adams, Maddy, James or Habib had performed? Vaughan and Adams hadn't even played yet, James and Habib had barely played either and had done nothing when they had. So therefore, picking Vaughan ahead of Habib wasn't picking someone who performed over someone who didn't. In fact, of course, Habib had performed in domestic cricket, well; Vaughan had not. Thus, picking Habib over Vaughan would indeed have been picking players who perform over those who do not. Not the other way around. And that indeed is what I'm in favour of.
As for Brown's failures in ODIs not affecting his test chances, well that ignores the fact that we used the abbreviated form for years to try out players for tests. Whether we should've done this is or not is moot; the fact is that we did it. Brown's failure was always going to harm his chances.
We shouldn't have done. That's the point. I wasn't talking about taking into account anyone's folly selection policies, what you said to me was "who would you have picked?" So I gave who I'd have picked.
I'll ask you a question now: why are you still repeating this facile nonsense? How many people do you think you've convinced by your idea that players who are selected & who then perform are selectorial "errors"? Any? If so I'd like them to say so.
If you don't think it matters that anybody else shares your opinion and you know best, well cool, but you don't need to keep regurgitating the same point. Believe it or not I actually come on here to learn something about the sport I didn't already know. You seem to be here to prove you know best and aren't interested in anyone else's opinion, even when your own has no relation to reality. Since you aren't interested in learning or anyone else's opinion why are you here?
Well that's claptrap, of course. Naturally, I try to educate people who I see as holding mistaken ideas, but I (unlike you) know just how much I've learnt down the years posting on here. If I can't convince people to see what I consider the error of their ways, well, that's their choice, but no, I won't stop saying it - there's always someone new reading and who knows, maybe eventually people will change their views. I have, so therefore so will some others.
He'd gone really well in the summer, eh? James had already had his chance by then too. Brown should've played tests at some point, but given his poor ODI record there's nothing to suggest he'd have been a success in the longer form, given he was generally regarded as a limited overs specialist.
