Somerset
Cricketer Of The Year
The Hitchcock selection was baffling. As I said in an earlier post he deserved to go after two very average performances but why he was selected in the first place is odd - hes effectively turned himself into an opening batsman in ODIs and 20-20 cricket who offers a bowling option, yet Bracewell stuck him at number 10 and played him as a specialist bowler.Link's not working for me...
Incidentally, after all the discussion in the thread I hope O'Brien does get picked at some point during our tour as I'm now quite keen to see him in action. I've probably actually seen him play before, but, rather like the proliferation of quite-good-but-not-great Spanish & Argentinian tennis players who all seem to play in exactly the same way & whose own mothers would struggle to pick out in identity parades, I'd never noted anything about him to set him apart from other journeymen NZ seamers. Gillespie/Mason/O'Brien seemed largely interchangable to this casual observer.
Can't believe he's anything like as awful as Hitchcock tho; that poor bloke really appears really out of his depth at this level. Looks very ordinary.
O'Brien is simply not up to international level. Mason may be if hes actually given an extended run in the side (when was the last time he played 2-3 games on the trot?). Gillespie after a promising start seemed to get worked out as he'd pitch the ball up and teams would plunder his bowling - and then go around the wicket with mixed success.