In the aftermath of Australia’s failed Ashes campaign, serious
questions have been raised about the relative state of the Australian
selectors’ succession planning.

It’s easy to be content, if not even smug, when you stand seemingly
unchallenged astride the cricket world with a team that’s beating all-comers
and with many members of the established XI
boasting the kind of personal statistics that left little doubt they
were among the very best.

But how quickly things turned around in England, where Australia’s
goading of the Poms was not only shown to be ill-advised – with skipper
Michael Vaughan reflecting that it motivated his team, which had its
own world class players
to match the seemingly invincible world champion team in both forms of
the
game.

The age of the Australian team worried many of us, but before the
tour no one predicted just how many of our players would start to look
like
retirement could be forced on them much sooner than they
or their financial planner had anticipated.

Having lived the high life himself, Michael Slater is hardly a voice in
the wilderness when it comes to warning how quickly employment as an
Australian player can be snatched away from you. And he’s right when he says
players will, with few exceptions, wait to be pushed, rather than leave of their
own accord. Even Steve Waugh only gave
it away when the selectors would no longer guarantee his selection beyond his
last series at home against England two seasons ago.

The vast majority of the Australian team will never earn the kind
of money they are paid while on contract with Cricket Australia after they retire and understandably want to maximise that
opportunity. But the
idea that the selectors owe the team a loyalty that often stretches well
beyond their use-by-date is emotive blackmail.
In any team sport, the team does come first. When the individual is not
performing or paying their way, they must go.

That’s not being disloyal, hard-hearted or lacking gratitude for those
who have served the baggy green so well, but too often this selection panel has
shown a marked disinclination to face reality or the consequences of having so
many aged veterans in the team without enough young blood
being introduced.

Given the Ashes tour selection panel only made one forced change –
with the dropping of Jason Gillespie – during the series and with now captain Ricky Ponting warning
against over-reacting to our defeat, nobody expects the selectors to suddenly
cut a swathe through the team.

Ponting’s shorthand was also a message to say we already have the team
in place to do the job. But it came up short against England, and
unless at least one, if not more,
of our failing batsmen is passed over for the Super Series Test against
the rest of the world, cricket fans will have a right to be concerned
that the selectors aren’t doing their job.