All this talk is precisely why ODIs leave me cold these days. I mean yeah limited overs cricket is a vastly inferior sport to proper cricket in general but I always used to like the variety it brought, the different ideas, the different flow of the game etc - just as a change. It's impossible to take it seriously when selection is so inconsistent and random though.
I for one have always been a big advocate of the idea that the best way to adequately prepare for the World Cup was to build a culture of winning and performance, whereby the best eleven played near enough every match and you had to perform to break into the side - but if people just disagreed with that it wouldn't be a deal breaker. I may disagree with the "build for the next World Cup" policy but I'd live with it if it was applied across the board as an official stance. The same applies to the "give potential Test players exposure to international cricket" policy, the "blood youngsters for the sake of it" policy, the "rest and rotate players constantly" policy and all the other policies that seem to be partly but not completely implemented into every team in the world's selection process. At least then you could argue one way or another with each player but as it stands there are a thousand and one possible reasons for a player to be selected or not selected for any ODI squad. Even if they were just using a weighted combination of all those factors I could probably learn to live with that too, but the rules for each player seem entirely different - when Bevan was dropped from the side it was because Australia wanted to build for the next World Cup and he's arguably the best ODI batsman ever; now we've got David Hussey playing (something I don't actually have any problem with - if it was to be consistent with the rest of the squad) and he's been a nothing international player his entire career. If Peter Forrest is playing then why isn't Rob Quiney? If McKay can get a game then why can't Hopes?
It's almost like the selectors sit down and pick three elevens - the "best team regardless of forward planning XI", the "team we think we'll be taking to the World Cup XI" and the "team of the best domestic performers across all three formats this season XI" - and then throw all 33 names into a hat before drawing out 14 of them. There's no consistency in thought or even seemingly a weighted system by which these factors are weighed against each other; it's just ****ing random.
Maybe if the three countries participating actually picked their best available lineups for this series or even, failing that, just picked squads that had some consistency in thought and process about them, we would care about who won the tri-series as it'd be a true test of current ability in these conditions. ODIs are losing respect from the fans because that's the message they're getting from the selectors.