Australian test selection 2020/21

[Senile Sentry]

Surprised at how good Murali and Jadeja's top order average is.

Murali understandable since he would bowl early and bowl all day, so gets a chance to have a go at all.

Jadeja is surprisingly brilliant.

 

[the big bambino]

Could have fooled me

 

[Daemon]

I always knew Lyon was only good for tailenders slogging to midwicket

 

[Smudge49]

The BBL is by far the most effective means Australian has of reaching younger generations and less traditional (i.e. non-Anglo) demographics that otherwise are getting courted extremely heavily by the AFL/NRL. The long-term health of the game depends as much on broadening the talent pool and getting as many of these kids interested in cricket as it does the Shield.

Agree with this talent pool point you make, but then CA needs to make a choice. They need to conduct BBL with full strength squads with the Australian international calendar not clashing with it, because there is no real progress an upcoming player can make, by only mostly playing against fringe players who are more or less on his level.

Cricket Australia is the only cricket board around the world stupid enough to dilute their own marque event, by keeping their big name players occupied with international cricket at the same time of that event.

This is gluttonous behavior on part of Cricket Australia who want to shove as much cricket as possible into the summer, without worrying about it's ramifications and outcomes on overall health of Australian cricket.

The current state of affairs literally ensures that only a test cricketer misses a good chunk of the BBL, it might not be a problem for big names like Warner, Smith or Cummins but for a young player missing a whole season of BBL to carry drinks for the Australian test side might not be a great deal.

It is arguably why no batsman with a FC average north of 40, don't really much play BBL to begin with.

 

[Spikey]

For some reason they added another seam bowler to the squad and didn't replace Wade with a batman, just Carey

 

[Prince EWS]

For some reason they added another seam bowler to the squad and didn't replace Wade with a batman, just Carey

Yeah, perhaps they only had the extra batsman in the squad to begin with because they thought Wade doubled as the backup keeper (ie. "if Paine gets injured we'll just bring in another bat and make Wade keep").

Harris covers the openers, Henriques covers the middle order, Carey covers the keeper, Swepson covers the spinner, 198234872347 reserve quicks cover the three that haven't been dropped or injured for over a year. Makes sense.

Also, daily reminder that Test squad member Head > dropped spud Wade.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Murali understandable since he would bowl early and bowl all day, so gets a chance to have a go at all.

Jadeja is surprisingly brilliant.

Still don't see how that would be relevant to this statistic at all, but Jadeja wouldn't be too different in that regard. Given that he's played such a high proportion of his games in spinning conditions (due to being the 2nd spinner or much of his career) he would have bowled a lot, and early, quite often as well.

 

[morgieb]

Yeah weird there's four backup quicks but only one backup bat. And that's despite Head's unconvincingness.

Why Harris is still there is annoying but I guess if you blacklist Khawaja there wasn't really any other options. At least Wade has been permanently ****ed off. I'm guessing Richardson wasn't fully fit?

 

[TheJediBrah]

Harris and Head really? Feel like banging my head against the wall

Hopefully Pucovski and Henriques start in the XI

 

[Burgey]

Full squad:

Tim Paine (c), Sean Abbott, Alex Carey, Pat Cummins, Cameron Green, Marcus Harris, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Moises Henriques, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Michael Neser, James Pattinson, Will Pucovski, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, Mark Steketee, Mitchell Swepson, David Warner.

 

[morgieb]

T20 squad fine but I think I'd have found room for Ellis. Hard to say who over though, ideally it'd be Tye but he's still had a decent BBL series and maintains and excellent T20 record.

 

[Prince EWS]

How great was the India series?

Burns - GOOOONE
Wade - GOOOONE
TJB - frustrated

Couldn't ask for anything more.

 

[Burgey]

Yeah, perhaps they only had the extra batsman in the squad to begin with because they thought Wade doubled as the backup keeper (ie. "if Paine gets injured we'll just bring in another bat and make Wade keep").

Harris covers the openers, Henriques covers the middle order, Carey covers the keeper, Swepson covers the spinner, 198234872347 reserve quicks cover the three that haven't been dropped or injured for over a year. Makes sense.

Also, daily reminder that Test squad member Head > dropped spud Wade.

Harris also covers middle order spots as he can open and Pucovski move down the order if needs be. Just hav to hope Harris misses out altogether.

 

[GoodAreasShane]

All in all, can't really complain too much. Don't think either Abbott or especially Steketee are remotely Test class, but they are unlikely to play barring major injury issues so that isn't too bad I guess. Seems like the selectors didn't want to pick Jhye with no recent long form cricket under his belt, which is fair enough imo. Hope Pucovski is fit, if he is I would definitely stick with him opening as opposed to the middle order, don't agree even remotely with asking him to move around the order in this stage of his career

 

[Smudge49]

Axing Wade and literally taking the same squad that performed like **** this summer, is just the selectors finding a scapegoat to silence the people.

Bringing in a guy like Carey in his 30s who also averages in the 30s across formats, is simply scratching the bottom of the barrel, barring the 2019 World Cup Carey's white ball career is still stuck in a limbo, so to expect him to do any better against the red ball is wishful thinking.

Also FFS if Mitchell Marsh, Jhye Richardson are fit enough to play international cricket then why aren't they in the test squad?

If one of the guys from the first XI goes down, Steketee, Neser, Carey, Harris these are the ****ing backups.

Also for the love of god, Head doesn't have a single score of note against a top team in his stop start mess of a test career, why aren't other guys like Maddinson, McDermott, Whiteman being considered? Isn't 20 tests a long enough time to figure out that Head ain't no good?

 

[TheJediBrah]

I like this smudge69 guy

 

[Gnske]

Where the **** is Jimmy Peirson and why is Alex "I've captained like once or twice lmao I guess im a test captain prospect now" Carey being meme'd, who do these dog **** selectors think they're pulling their hot fat delicious ****s off to?

 

[Gnske]

I hope we get smashed, I hope we get smashed so hard by this terrible South African lineup that we have to do a full Maddinson/Renshaw/Handscomb again out of pure desperation.

 

[TheJediBrah]

Only reason Wade is out of the squad and Head isn't is Wade is a gun T20 player and Head is equally useless in both forms

 

[Smudge49]

This squad would get smashed in South Africa without a doubt, Rabada and Nortje aren't the type of bowlers the current batting line-up can hang around with.

Aus fast bowlers were already running on fumes by the end of the Gabba test and the confidence in leadership also has to be at an all time low.

Giving Maharaj a five wicket haul would probably be the moment, that caps off peak doom & gloom for this tour.