Let's hope Albion have signed off on some overtime for their baggy green cap staff cause there's bound to be a spike in orders coming through for merkins making their Test debut in the next few months...
And on Mr Bean's point about the nonsensical rotation policy for the bowlers, I couldn't agree more. The last straw for me was Hazelwood being made to sit out the domestic 1 day final - what, the man can't bowl 10 overs (at most) a week and a half out from a Test match?? That decision should have been the subject of far more scrutiny and ridicule than it was.
I don't expect miracles and for a team similar to the one below to beat Pakistan at home and India away, but like most I'd start planning and picking for the future and going this way;
Warner
Bancroft
Khawaja
Smith
Ferguson
Maddinson
Nevill
Starc
Hazelwood
Bird *
Lyon
* Really wish Jason Behrendorff could re-capture the form he showed a couple of summers ago. Maybe he will yet, still hope for him at 26. I would like for him to step it up and take that 3rd seamer spot because the worry with Bird is that if the ball ain't swinging he becomes a bit "Mennie-like"... and there's already too Many Mennie's in Australian cricket.... Obviously Cummins would be great to have there but it's looking more and more like he's Shaun Tait MKII - a white ball bowler only....
The GOAT stays because, as has been pointed out, finger spinners don't really ever do well in Perth - the fact Maharaj and Duminy picked up a couple in Perth says more about our abysmal batting than it does their finger-spinning wizardry. And the Hobart track was made for seam and swing and Lyon shouldn't have played - that was poor selection (no surprises there). Couple that with having only 85 first innings runs in the bank and there ain't a finger spinner anywhere who's going to thrive in those conditions
Ferguson gets another go. I'd probably give him 2 Tests v Pakistan also to show a bit of faith. I understand people might say that he's getting more latitude than Mennie but the Hobart pitch was tailor made for bowling and Mennie was more pedestrian than a zebra crossing. If Ferguson fails again and again, then, like AlwaysGreen I think has mentioned, I'd be tempted to give Burns a go down the order. I'm certain his most productive period at first class level came before he was moved up the order.
Maddinson averaging a tick over 37 after 40 1st class games is probably one to pick and stick with for 2 years IMO - it's not a great record by any means but the reality is, after that many 1st class matches, he's the best candidate under the age of 25 and one for the future (we hope). Cricket Australia need to get real with these blokes because from the outside looking in, collectively they seem soft and carry themselves with an air of entitlement. Less coaches, let's have Lehmann and AB in the dressing room, someone who can tell the merkins they need to wake up because the blokes they're struggling to score runs off now aren't even a shadow of the blokes throwing them down against the last era of struggling Aussie Test teams and that if they are fair dinkum and reckon they're international standard show it on the pitch, not on Instagram.
