The Ashes 2013

Like a rose bush, prune the shit out of it and the new growth will come back bigger and better than ever.

Wouldn't everyone rather a team of Agars and Warners having a crack then a bunch of tossers playing fueding egos.
 
I am certainly in the camp of picking our best and most likely to succeed at test level and let them develop in test matches. The problem is identifying that talent and getting the balance right. Rogers and Warner for mine should be our openers for the summer Ashes and South Africa tours coming up. Obviously if form is absolutely terrible changes to be made. Finding a number 3 is the hard part. Khawaja and Hughes just haven't shown enough to suggest they will develop. Both are absolutely terrible against spin. Clarke obviously stays in the side. Watson goes and I think he can stick to being a shot form specialist. We've got 2 middle order spots to fill plus the keeper position. We are pretty sweet for bowlers but we need to keep them on the park. Lyon is good enough at what he does until Agar gets a bit more bowling under his belt although I'm not against keeping him in the side permanently as a spinner.

I think we need to find a first drop and a 5 and 6 batsmen plus pick a keeper that is going to be the rock which you build a team around. Either back Paine or Wade and be done with it. Picking Hartley would be ideal because he still has 4 years left in him easily maybe more but we all know it won't happen.
 
Id leave Smith as he has shown some promise, Hughes Khwaja and Watto are dead set enigmas
 
I'm not sure who they should pick or who should be in the team. Smith hasn't gone too bad but we need blokes who are going to hit 100's.
 
Bucking Beads said:
I'm not sure who they should pick or who should be in the team. Smith hasn't gone too bad but we need blokes who are going to hit 100's.
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yeah, these guys representing us in the top order at present are riddled with issues when it comes to being test match ready batsmen .. Khawaha is apparently this free flowing stroke maker when he bats in the nets but get him in the middle during a test innings and he's the corpse with pads reincarnated - wtf?! .. Phil Hughes still has way too many 'moving parts' in his batting despite his efforts to refine his so-called home-spun technique .. Steve Smith just isn't test class and well Watson, there isn't enough space in this box to describe what's going on with him ..

I'd love it if we could somehow keep our test players & up and commers completely seperate from our T20 circus freaks - like rugby with the 'sevens' specialists .. but I guess the almighty $$ means that just won't happen.


When it comes to batting we just need to get back to developing guys with solid techniques .. I watch our current top order and am just staggered that these guys who're so technically flawed are supposedly the best of the best in this country at the moment.
 
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I'm really not sure on Khawaja. I think it is all confidence for him. I think if he gets the big score he could kick on. He does have technical issues though.
 
No worse than Hughes and smith. Which sums it up really.

Nic Maddison is worth keeping an eye on
 
Do we still have that Cricket Academy? If so, WTF have they been doing for 10 years? We went from having a production line of players in shield cricket knocking down the door to be picked, some of whom couldn't even crack the team until nearly or past 30 (Mike Hussey!). Now it's like "ermahgerd is there anyone who can bat?"

I refuse to believe that in a country like ours with such a high participation rate (albeit falling) that there was just no talent come through in the past decade.
 
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