*Official* Australia in Bangladesh

[pup11]

Australia news: Australia have smaller talent pool - Greg Chappell | Australia Cricket News | ESPN Cricinfo


Now... this just keeps getting better and better, in my earlier post as I said Australia quickly needs to decide what's the best way forward, whether we stick with the same core side or do we start blooding youngsters.

The funny thing is that the 'great' Greg Chappell suddenly thinks that there is a lack of talent in Australia and yet for some reason he along with other selectors had no problems in trying out rookies in a test series as important as the Ashes.

Finch, Hughes, Ferguson, Cosgrove, Khawaja, Warner, Lynn, Wade, Copeland, Boyce, O'Keffe, Starc, Faulkner, Pattinson, George are all pretty exciting players and not to forget our U-19 squad that won the worldcup last year has plenty of developing international quality players in it.

So to say that Australia has a small talent pool is just wrong and it just comes across more as an attempt to mask the failure of the NSP to rebuild the side and back good young players.

 

[Nate]

Amen.

 

[vcs]

The Test team, he said, could use the services of the three senior statesmen, Ricky Ponting, Michael Hussey and Simon Katich, but only so long as their selection remains "viable", with them scoring runs and guiding the transitional team. "They are mature cricketers, they know what the landscape is and that they can't play forever. As long as they can bring something to the table, not only the runs or wickets, but the input they can have with the group, they are viable."

Chappell seems to be quite determined to repeat all the mistakes he made in his stint with India.

 

[Spikey]

yeah look at the mess india is currently in

 

[vcs]

yeah look at the mess india was in four years back

Fixed.

 

[Blaze 18]

India's "current mess" has nothing to do with Greg Chappell. It has got to do with a dude called Gary Kirsten. Greg Chappell's tenure overlapped with India's worst period in the noughties. Not a coincidence.

 

[Top_Cat]

Geez, still a wannabe baseballer.

Of course Australia has a smaller talent pool than India, has always been that way (1 billion is much larger than 21 million). It's the way that talent is managed that has been the difference between the two sides. We saw it years ago when Australia was dominating and we're seeing it now when they're not (India, vice versa).

Dunno why people put so much stock in what Chappell says, tbh. His record as a player is sublime but as anything else cricket-related, it's abysmal. Terrible captain, awful coach. I mean, my God, there are so many examples but his time with SA is a very elegant microcosm of the poisonous atmosphere he brings to a coaching situation. Is obsessed with being the bloke who 'discovers' the next big player and has no compunction about burning a new talent so if you look a bit classy, he'll stick to you like glue and open a bunch of doors. Doesn't really care if you succeed but, if you do, he'll claim you. If you're older and maybe still doing well but out of the picture for higher selection, Chappell has absolutely no interest in you and will directly ask why you're even bothering to hang around.

In Chappell's two (I think; 03/04 and 04/05?) seasons with SA, they went from being a team making solid gains after a couple of seasons at the foot of the ladder to being the foot of the ladder again and not really recovering since. With him in charge, SA lost the solid/unspectacular but effective players who the gains were built on (Fitzgerald, Johnson, Vaughan, Deitz, Mike Smith), managed to close off the careers of younger blokes who were putting up good numbers but didn't quite have enough shots (Cameron, Williams, Davies) and managed to piss off a bloke like Greg Blewett, a bloke who's usually impossible to piss off. Was behind picking guys flashy players with nice hands but no defense (Ferguson, Manou, Cosgrove, etc.). When the new line-up was shot out for 29 at the SCG, he blamed grade cricket for not producing players with techniques to handle the moving ball. Even if true ('tis), there were actually guys in the squad not getting a game who did have the defensive game for a track like that.

It doesn't end at the players themselves either, there were several structural changes too. He was instrumental in the rise of Graeme Manou as not only the regular 'keeper ahead of Shane Deitz (despite being one of their best bats) but when Deitz eventually spat it, ensured he was dropped from the team completely. Was a big fan of Manou and gave him the golden ticket to the captaincy, hence why I was less than sympathetic when Manou was recently kicked to the curb.

The atmosphere was so poisonous, a total pro like Andy Flower, coming off a good season with Essex, managed a couple of 50's and a mid-20's average. Word on the street at the time was that he thought Flower was taking Ferguson's spot so he gave him zero support and openly dissed him for being an older bloke in Australia on a 6 month working holiday.

It takes a special talent to take special talent and burn it in the way he does. He was a special talent and was picked early so thinks it's the only way, late developers are persona non grata and if you don't want to play Test cricket, you can **** right off.

WAC.

 

[vcs]

So much of that is so eerily reminiscent of some of the stuff he did in the Indian setup when he was here. Pissing off unpissable-off players (Tendulkar), messing with the role of a talented youngster (Irfan Pathan) and ending up ruining his progress, getting into a direct showdown with Ganguly, blaming everyone but himself, being a rent-a-quote for the media...

 

[Top_Cat]

tbh, it was a bit more personal here in SA and the effects pretty devastating in some ways. He was born here, played all of his junior cricket here and a large chunk of his Shield matches before leaving for QLD which caused a hell of a ****-storm at the time. He wasn't a fan of SA cricket before he left, not many were particularly pleased when he was made coach because it's well established what he does and how he does it. SACA were chasing the prestige of having G Chappell as the coach of their struggling team, he couldn't get a job anywhere else at the time, he and Ian McLauchlan are besties. A match made in cricketing hell, really.

Was also just galling to be cellar-dwellers literally the season after winning the Shield (having made the final the year before) when the squad was full off exciting young players. GChappell was just about the worst thing to happen to SA cricket.

 

[Flem274*]

Keep it up Chappell. Looking forward to the first mention of "We're a hard working, fighting unit who do the basics well, and that's how we keep up with the incredible talent other countries produce."

 

[Top_Cat]

Would never, ever say that. If they fail, he can be blamed. Better to say he has nothing to work with so couldn't have prevented losses.

 

[pup11]

Rogers
Hardwood
Geeves
Nannes
Laughlin
Ronchi
Casson
Krezja
McGain
Manou
Mckay
White
McDonald
Jaques
Hodge
Beer
Doherty
George
Noffke
Birt
Christian
Cosgrove
Cullen
Holland
George Bailey
Voges

Now these are few of the names I can think of who have been picked in one format or the other and then have been discarded soon after, so its just kind of an irony that Chappell would now talk about not wasting talent.

The thing is these guys just want new players to come into international cricket and start performing like seasoned veterans and when that obviously doesn't happen then their names are chucked into the rejection bin, I thought if there was such a lack of good talent around in Australia then we should have persisted with the players we were picking, but if one has a look at the way we have been picking our national side then its pretty clear that we are the one's lavishly wasting more talent then any other cricketing nation.

 

[Sylvester]

Load of rubbish really, yes India will have more players that enter the system but the majority of them won't be up to standard or even be pushing for selection.

 

[SamSawnoff]

Rogers
Hardwood
Geeves
Nannes
Laughlin
Ronchi
Casson
Krezja
McGain
Manou
Mckay
White
McDonald
Jaques
Hodge
Beer
Doherty
George
Noffke
Birt
Christian
Cosgrove
Cullen
Holland
George Bailey
Voges

Now these are few of the names I can think of who have been picked in one format or the other and then have been discarded soon after, so its just kind of an irony that Chappell would now talk about not wasting talent.

The thing is these guys just want new players to come into international cricket and start performing like seasoned veterans and when that obviously doesn't happen then their names are chucked into the rejection bin, I thought if there was such a lack of good talent around in Australia then we should have persisted with the players we were picking, but if one has a look at the way we have been picking our national side then its pretty clear that we are the one's lavishly wasting more talent then any other cricketing nation.

To be fair though (apart from the spin bowler situation for which the selectors should be ashamed of themselves) a lot of the bowlers in that list have come in due to injury. Brett Geeves would never have got a game unless the barrell was scraping through injury.

 

[Bun]

It shocks me that some of greg's decisions somehow mirror my thought processes five years back. That's definitely not good news

 

[wellAlbidarned]

Keep it up Chappell. Looking forward to the first mention of "We're a hard working, fighting unit who do the basics well, and that's how we keep up with the incredible talent other countries produce."

Got a sick bag handy whenever possible just in case someone directly compares them to the the Blackcaps.