I'm with adub on Marsh and Ferguson; the over-stated credentials of those two players in particular is something I have posted about at length on here before. It doesn't really bother me that they're in the frame too much as I've lowered my expectations of the selectors considerably and they have indeed improved a bit, but it is something that grates me.
I think they can used as great examples of two things staggeringly wrong with Australian cricket. The first of which is something I think even a lot of forum members here gloss over or deny - the fact that Australia simply had a generation of players come through who weren't that good. Marsh and Ferguson, at 28 and 26, are essentially in the perfect age range that selectors should be looking at bringing batsmen into the team at, and its this age group who we were expecting to choose from when replacing Hayden, Langer, etc. However, the blokes who are that age just haven't come through as many had hoped. Marsh and Ferguson haven't done anywhere near as well in the Shield as their predecessors and this is even despite the fact that the overall standard of it has declined. The other highly-rated young batsmen of their generation who did well at youth level - White, Doropolous, Simmons, Cowan, Birt, Paine etc - have all faired similarly or worse. It just didn't happen for these blokes for whatever reason, and it forced the selectors into firstly persisting with Marcus North too long in hope of him bridging the gap a bit, and secondly into turning to players with limited First Class experience such as Hughes, Khawaja and Smith before it was really ideal.
Secondly, they're basically posterboys for style over substance. They've both been chosen ones form a young age, always being promoted and congratulated at even the hint of success and fast-tracked ahead of other players who had performed to a higher standard because they just look so ****ing awesome when they score runs (and they do, not denying that). I think the O'Keefe/Lyon example is better here now though. Hand on heart, having seen a lot of O'Keefe now and more of Lyon than probably anyone on this forum (err Julian aside), I don't think O'Keefe is actually more likely by any real margin to make a contribution in Sri Lanka. That's not exactly the point, though, particularly when it's not just been a one-off punt or one-off snubbing but has instead become a matter of policy. Regardless of whether or not Keefers would make a good Test bowler, you do have to reward domestic performance at least most of the time to send the right message back to the entire system. The message the selectors are sending to all the cricketers in Australia - be they spinners or middle order batsmen or whoever - is that the way to crack the team is not to find a way of playing that actually works, but to find a way of playing that people think should work, whether it does or not. The arrogance in selection, that will only get worse under Chappell, which is to ignore results completely and assume a greater knowledge of the game than the game itself, is by far the biggest problem here. As I said, it's okay to have a punt very occasionally as a selector, or to use aesthetics and conventional wisdom to split two players of similar credentials, but it seems to be the first port of call when selecting any player now. We're now discouraging players from succeeding in any way possible and teaching them to look good at all costs. I'm not normally one to say the sky is falling but if that isn't corrected then things will get worse before they get better.
