Taking a punt

[Richard]

As I said:

You really are beyond the reach of any satirist, Richard. Your internet persona would be positively Swiftian if it were a put on.

It isn't prejudice. It would be prejudice if I'd taken a dislike to your style of posting before I knew your work.

It's my balanced and considered opinion that you come off as an idiot.

All well and good. Let's just leave it that you're in a relatively small minority with your opinion.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Actually, to bring the thread back to some kind of order, there's a case that Mitch Johnson is now rewarding the selectors faith. Before the start of the Australian 2008/09 season he'd taken 47 wickets @ 34.87, which is creditable but no more than that, but since he's taken a further 47 wickets but at 21.14 apiece.

 

[GIMH]

Why? All of that comes after the selection is made. Same way a dropped catch comes after a stroke is played, so the batsman never, under any circumstance, deserves any credit for it.

Whether a decision was successful and whether it was good - and not just in selection - are two different things.

It's not remotely comparable to a dropped catch. A dropped catch is (usually) a matter of fact. Player X gets dropped on Y, then scores Z more runs. If he hadn't been dropped, he'd have only scored Y. Fact.

Selection, quite simply, can never, ever, ever, ever be labelled as something that there is a definitive right and wrong way to go about. The whole process is subjective. Therefore you cannot factually state that what happened at point Y (ie the equivalent of the dropped catch) was right or wrong. As I've said before, selectors are paid to pick on the basis of what they see in players and not just what they see in the scorebook.

Collingwood's record wasn't very good, and if were picking on records alone then of course he shouldn't have been picked. Now I know you aren't suggesting they pick on records alone, so I don't quite get how you can then call any selection a cast-iron error. Colly was picked on the theory that he could provide grit and steel to the batting line-up, in the Hussain sort of mould (he was considered to play in place of Nas in Sri Lanka you will recall). Now this was just a theory at this point, nothing more. There was at the point of selection no way to determine whether Colly had it in him to provide such grit at test-level. He however clearly did and does, the selectors were therefore right. If he had proved himself to actually be mentally soft and incapable of concentration, they would have been wrong. There was no way to determine this until he had had a go in the Test team - it turned out his selection was right.

Luck can make a selection look good. However, if a player succeeds when he has a moderate domestic level we should not assume that this was a lucky selection, as there are often reasons behind such selections. Sometimes they come off (Colly), sometimes they don't (pick an England bowler). But you can normally find the reasoning behind selections when you read interviews, statements etc from when the squads were picked. We can judge what has happened against what was said at the time to determine how shrewd a selection turned out to be.

 

[Top_Cat]

This is just wrong, because Hoggard may have come over with a semi-acceptable record in 2002/03 but the reality was he was a poor Test bowler who only had a less-than-terrible record because circumstances had conspired in his favour. Anyone who watched his whole career rather than just the series' against their own team could tell that.

Hoggard went from poor to pretty decent in 2004, 4 years after making his Test debut and 2-and-a-half after becoming established in the side. Why that transformation was made, who knows, but it had absolutely nothing to do with playing international cricket. Hoggard has always been a very smart bowler and would have been under absolutely no illusions about the fact that he wasn't capable of doing some things. He's also always been an assiduous worker. But it was only in 2004 that he actually gained the capability to bowl well at Test level.

You've lost it. Is 'Test standard' a certification now? A log-book of achievements before one can be attain it with selection only after you have your book signed by the ECB? Life ain't so linear, mate. The highlighted statement is ludicrous. I saw him bowl in India before the Ashes series and he looked good, even if he didn't dominate. just because he had a method which worked which was then found out and he had to develop another one, doesn't mean he wasn't Test standard before he developed it.

 

[Jamee999]

Richard thinking that FC cricket provides an acceptable standard size over the first few years of a player's career to choose between two players of similar ability is rather confusing...

 

[Richard]

You've lost it. Is 'Test standard' a certification now? A log-book of achievements before one can be attain it with selection only after you have your book signed by the ECB? Life ain't so linear, mate. The highlighted statement is ludicrous. I saw him bowl in India before the Ashes series and he looked good, even if he didn't dominate. just because he had a method which worked which was then found out and he had to develop another one, doesn't mean he wasn't Test standard before he developed it.

Test standard isn't, obviously, a certification, but it's a pretty basic concept. Hoggard may have bowled decently on the rank seamer in Bangalore in 2001/02 but he was pretty terrible throughout the summer of 2002 and not remotely outstanding in 2001/02 apart from that Bangalore game and the first-innings at Christchurch the following match.

Hoggard's method didn't, for the most part, work. It worked on rank seamers like the two aforementioned, but otherwise, he was very poor. There were times in 2002 when Sri Lanka and India's batting was even worse (and in 2001/02 in New Zealand) but that wasn't because Hoggard was bowling well. He just wasn't very good, at all, until 2004.

 

[Richard]

Richard thinking that FC cricket provides an acceptable standard size over the first few years of a player's career to choose between two players of similar ability is rather confusing...

That sentence is far more confusing. I can't make any sense of it TBH. What do you mean "an acceptable standard size over the first few years of a player's career"?

 

[Richard]

It's not remotely comparable to a dropped catch. A dropped catch is (usually) a matter of fact. Player X gets dropped on Y, then scores Z more runs. If he hadn't been dropped, he'd have only scored Y. Fact.

Selection, quite simply, can never, ever, ever, ever be labelled as something that there is a definitive right and wrong way to go about. The whole process is subjective. Therefore you cannot factually state that what happened at point Y (ie the equivalent of the dropped catch) was right or wrong. As I've said before, selectors are paid to pick on the basis of what they see in players and not just what they see in the scorebook.

Collingwood's record wasn't very good, and if were picking on records alone then of course he shouldn't have been picked. Now I know you aren't suggesting they pick on records alone, so I don't quite get how you can then call any selection a cast-iron error. Colly was picked on the theory that he could provide grit and steel to the batting line-up, in the Hussain sort of mould (he was considered to play in place of Nas in Sri Lanka you will recall). Now this was just a theory at this point, nothing more. There was at the point of selection no way to determine whether Colly had it in him to provide such grit at test-level. He however clearly did and does, the selectors were therefore right. If he had proved himself to actually be mentally soft and incapable of concentration, they would have been wrong. There was no way to determine this until he had had a go in the Test team - it turned out his selection was right.

Luck can make a selection look good. However, if a player succeeds when he has a moderate domestic level we should not assume that this was a lucky selection, as there are often reasons behind such selections. Sometimes they come off (Colly), sometimes they don't (pick an England bowler). But you can normally find the reasoning behind selections when you read interviews, statements etc from when the squads were picked. We can judge what has happened against what was said at the time to determine how shrewd a selection turned out to be.

That should read "very, very occasionally they will come off, almost always they won't". You can always find reasonings - mostly, however, they're just bluster and bluff, and often plain wrong. If I disagree with the reasoning then I consider the selection an error.

People do pick players to "add grit" or similar to batting from time to time, and I never, ever, ever, ever agree with it. "Grit" is such an overrated, vague thing. What you need is the ability to score runs, nought else. Score them under a variety of circumstances - when it's easy and when it's hard.

Irony is that the most un-vague definition of "grit" is scoring runs under difficult circumstances and failing to cash-in when the going's easy (which is exactly what Hussain did for most of his career). And Collingwood's career up to 2008 was the absolute opposite of that - he only ever scored on rank runways.

 

[Jamee999]

That sentence is far more confusing. I can't make any sense of it TBH. What do you mean "an acceptable standard size over the first few years of a player's career"?

Ooops, "standard size" should read "sample size"

 

[Richard]

Well what makes you think I think "First-Class cricket provides an acceptable standard size over the first few years of a player's career to choose between two players of similar ability" in all cases. Of course it doesn't.

I've always said there can be absolutely no rigidity in selection. You must understand how the game works (and a few selectors can't even do this).

 

[GIMH]

But if there should be no rigidity in selection (which I agree with) then how can you definitively call something an error without being fully aware of the discussions that took place in the selection meetings? I don't buy it.

 

[BoyBrumby]

But if there should be no rigidity in selection (which I agree with) then how can you definitively call something an error without being fully aware of the discussions that took place in the selection meetings? I don't buy it.

Because no-one ever could resonably have expected Collingwood to perform like he did. It wasn't even somewhat remotely likely.

 

[oitoitoi]

Because no-one ever could resonably have expected Collingwood to perform like he did. It wasn't even somewhat remotely likely.

Collingwood has way outperformed expectations. So did Vaughan looking at his FC record, Trescothick perhaps too.

 

[GIMH]

But not the expectations of those who picked them in the team, which is the key point

 

[Richard]

Collingwood has way outperformed expectations. So did Vaughan looking at his FC record, Trescothick perhaps too.

Vaughan's First-Class record during the time he's been playing Tests is pretty similar to his Test record.

Also, it should never be forgotten that most of Vaughan's Test career has been a fair disappointment. By and large, as I've said a number of times, he's kept doing exactly what David Byas said to Nasser Hussain about him just prior to his initial selection in 1999:

He always looks good. But he always gets out.

 

[Richard]

But if there should be no rigidity in selection (which I agree with) then how can you definitively call something an error without being fully aware of the discussions that took place in the selection meetings? I don't buy it.

Dale Brumby has it pretty much. If they expected Collingwood to perform as well as he has, their expectations were, in my view, erroneous. They had no right to expect it, and that it has in fact happened does not in my view justify the expectations.

Collingwood doing as well as he has in Tests in the last 9 months or so never had any right to be expected. That it has happened should in my view always be regarded as a surprise.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Collingwood has way outperformed expectations. So did Vaughan looking at his FC record, Trescothick perhaps too.

Sorry, I was taking the piss. Rather too subtly it seems.

 

[Jamee999]

Vaughan's First-Class record during the time he's been playing Tests is pretty similar to his Test record.

Also, it should never be forgotten that most of Vaughan's Test career has been a fair disappointment. By and large, as I've said a number of times, he's kept doing exactly what David Byas said to Nasser Hussain about him just prior to his initial selection in 1999:

You must be joking. Our most successful captain for god-knows how long, the heart of our batting order for a good few years - yes he's had patches where he hasn't performed to the levels we would have expected, but all Test batsmen do.

 

[Uppercut]

Vaughan's First-Class record during the time he's been playing Tests is pretty similar to his Test record.

Also, it should never be forgotten that most of Vaughan's Test career has been a fair disappointment. By and large, as I've said a number of times, he's kept doing exactly what David Byas said to Nasser Hussain about him just prior to his initial selection in 1999:

Aye. Unless he was picked as a specialist captain in advance there's nothing in his test career that screams "big success of left-field selection" at me. There was a reason he didn't score more runs than he did in CC, and those same reasons prevented him scoring more runs than he did in tests.

 

[GIMH]

Dale Brumby has it pretty much. If they expected Collingwood to perform as well as he has, their expectations were, in my view, erroneous. They had no right to expect it, and that it has in fact happened does not in my view justify the expectations.

Collingwood doing as well as he has in Tests in the last 9 months or so never had any right to be expected. That it has happened should in my view always be regarded as a surprise.

The only way to measure whether your expectations were correct is to judge whether or not they were fulfilled. By definition that is a fact.