Robin Smith's exclusion was a shocker. But they out did it by never recalling him after SA 95/96 tour.
I thought hick for thorpe as a normal call , I wasn't familiar with the first class performances of other guys during that time. The tailenders well they lost it in 95/96 but they did hung in there in 98 which helped to achieve series victoy.
There may be selction howlers against SA too but less compared to other calls.
I don't disagree that probably, via strange coincidence, England's selectors tended to make fewer errors in the 1990s when the opponents happened to be South Africa. And yes it was most heartening to see Croft, Gough and Fraser keep-out South Africa's bowlers in the Old Trafford Test of 1998 as Paul Adams had so infuriatingly managed to keep-out Cork, Malcolm and Fraser himself at Newlands in 1995/96. Whether England would've won that series had they knocked-over Adams instantly we'll never know, but it might well have been a classic series-decider had they done so. Instead it was an embarrassment. And the fact that that Old Trafford escape was followed by two victories made it that much sweeter.
As for Hick replacing Thorpe in 1998, well, 11-and-a-half years down the line it's difficult to really give a truly convincing account of the whos, whats, wheres, whens and whys, but speaking purely in hindsight I've tended to think Crawley himself probably deserved a call-up earlier (he ended-up playing only in the last Test of the summer, after Hick), and that any of Ben Smith, Mal Loye, Aftab Habib and Alistair Brown probably deserved it more than Hick. Only Habib of those four even played Test cricket (he might as well not have - he got a whole 3 innings') and all of them undoubtedly deserved something of a chance, especially Brown. Loye almost got it later in the summer as well, but in the end they went for Steve James (who like Habib never got a remotely fair crack of the whip). Hick it could be argued should have exhausted his chances by that time. There is no guarantee that any of Smith, Habib, Loye, Brown or James would've been successful Test players given a fair chance - but Hick was in the end probably given too many chances and they were not given enough, especially given some of the others who played around their time.
