cricket with balls

Phil Hughes has never gone out to a short ball off his gloves or any real variation of the ball that is his weakness at test match cricket.

Shane Watson has gone out LBW 6 out of his last 7 test innings, and has also gone out after a break 4 times during that period.

Who has the weakness?

Watson has a vastly superior looking technique than Hughes’ technique of looking like he is a glass doll being dropped from the second floor.

But Watson’s test average can’t even look up at Hughes’ average.

Watson has no test century, since coming in as opener he is yet to take a wicket in three tests, and keeps going out the same way.

Phil Hughes must be beside himself, and beside himself there must be Chris Rogers and Phil Jacques who are beside him who is… you know.

The Australian batting line up makes no sense. A middle order batsman and a number three open the batting, and an opening batsman at number four.

The one resource that Australia seems to have in reserve is opening batsmen, yet both their openers are manufactured. It just doesn’t make sense.

Hilditch may like to think of himself as some wacky experimental scientist mixing up random potions and hoping for a good outcome.

There are simple ways around this, swap Hussey for Watson, and see how that goes.

Or drop Hussey, bring back in a proper opener, move Clarke to 4 and Watson to 5. Watson doesn’t have to change the way he plays then.

Or drop Watson until there is a spot in the middle order where his bowling can actually be used, and bring in an opening batsman, there is a pile of them at the door.

What I expect Hilditch to do is bring in a second keeper in the place of North, open the batting with Mitchell Johnson, move Hussey to number 8 and wait for the magic to happen.

I just want to know what Phil Hughes thinks of all this, oh for the glory days when he was tweeting the inner workings of his mind.

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I haven’t checked my rss feed for a few days, and then i do and i see this shit:

“Cricket Australia has reappointed Andrew Hilditch as the chairman of the national selection panel until the end of the 2011 World Cup.

Hilditch was retained despite Australia’s 2-1 series loss to England in this year’s Ashes series.

Hilditch has been chairman of selectors since 2006 and a selector since 2000.”

The bastards slipped this in.

I thought he was supposed to be fired, not reinstated for years.

A quick now and then from Andrew Hilditch, Australia’s chief selector.

Then:

“I have not really thought too much about (Nannes’ move to Holland), to be honest”.

“Nannes’ performances have been good at domestic level but we are fortunate enough at this time to have some very good international bowlers available, as we had hoped. We feel we have the right flexibility in our squad with the players we have.”

Now:

“We are keen to look at different players as specialist T20 players in these two matches and in this instance we have selected Dirk Nannes following his strong domestic performances in recent seasons to have a look at him in the Australian set up.”

Australia has no spinners in England, one is at home with his kid, another is not taking cocaine, and then Nathan Hauritz.

This is a terrible situation, but Andrew Hilditch and I have been working on a plan.

The raelians are experimenting in cloning, so Andrew and I flew over to nevada, and gave them the coccyx of Tiger Bill O’Reilly.

Being that this is still an experiment, there have been problems.

The First Tiger Bill clone could only bowl long hops with a ridiculous slingy side on action, the second one bowled shit, but did spend hours explaining why he should be picked, and the third bowled ok but stole Andrew’s wallet.

At this stage we are expecting them to have perfected Tiger Bill in time for the 2nd test.

Andrew Hilditch’s belief in the Australian batsmen and Shane Watson’s delicate body seems more moronic the longer this tour goes (5 days of cricket in).  He and his team decided that Australia’s spare batsmen for the tour was Shane Watson, a man that makes a violet crumble look like a titanium rod.

Watson broke down, surprisingly absolutely no one, and Australia are left with two men to be back up batsmen for the next test, Andrew McDonald, not a test class batsmen, and Graham Manou, definitely not a test class batsmen.

All of this would be fine if the Australian batting order was firing on all cylinders, but if Marcus North’s batting was a car then he wouldn’t be able to put the key in.

The best way of explaining North’s current form is that Nathan Hauritz looks like Mark Waugh in comparison. North cannot buy, steal, find or molest a run so far.

Against Sussex he was in quicksand, his first innings lasted 5 balls, his second innings lasted 50 balls for 11 runs. There was a sense of desperation in his batting that I haven’t seen since the last time I saw Michael Hussey out of form (which definitely was not today).

Today he lasted 5 balls again, although I am not sure how. Almost every ball, no matter how benign it appeared, was like a cluster bomb when it got to him.

North is a very accomplished batsman, but he isn’t a world-beater, and if his off spin wasn’t like Viagra to the Australian selectors you couldn’t see them picking him ahead of Hodge, Ferguson, Hussey (jnr), Klinger or some random NSWales youngster.

His maiden hundred was well made, but he did have some luck. Had South Africa seen him play a bit more they would have closed down his “Western Australian scoring channel” though point with a posse of catching fielders a la Stephen Fleming to Damien Martyn.

And since that hundred Marcus North has not been a factor, although since that hundred he has had only 3 innings to be a factor.

There was a time when Australia would have had a “bat off” with a couple of batsmen on a tour like this, but Hilditch turned up with his batting superglued in place.

Right now, he must be looking for some nail polish remover, because North is looking shaky at best, and at worst, he looks like an Ashes anchor like The Krab Katich did in 05.

Shane Watson’s injury hasn’t made this worse, as even if he was brought into the side to replace North, what sort of kamikaze gambler would bet on him lasting 5 whole days of cricket.

Surely even Hilditch is questioning is choices about now.