The job of being a selector is highly overrated.
Before I was 10 years old, I had devised a nearly faultless system for picking the Australian cricket team based solely on geography – and it worked remarkably well at the time.
My incredibly patient father would sit at the breakfast table with me and as I was learning to read, I would voraciously scour the daily newspaper sports section as we discussed his passion – cricket.
He would teach me the meaning of words like voracious and scour. When my report cards came home, he also taught me the meaning of words like atrocious, misbehaviour, hopeless, inattentive, pathetic and appalling!
My system for picking the Australian team which he thought I had oversimplified was very straightforward. Between Stackpole, Lawry, Cowper, Redpath, Sheahan and Watson – if you needed a batter, you just picked a Victorian – that is where all the best ones seemed to come from anyway.
When Bill Lawry was unceremoniously dumped from the Australian cricket team, they picked another Victorian to replace him. I felt this was vindication of my theory in practice.
When you needed a spinner, you simply opened the book of Australian cricketers at the page of South Australia.
Rowdy and TJ were both from there and they were numbers 1 and 2 in my book. Other spinners like Gleeson and O’Keefe from NSW got a run but the two from SA were clearly the best in my considered opinion. It was not until years later that I discovered their treachery in actually being from WA and moving to SA to improve their chances of selection. Good moves as it turned out.
If you wanted a fast bowler, you just rang the WACA and enquired “We need a quick, who have you got?” Garth was from there and carried the Australian attack for a decade.
The selectors though, being selectors, couldn’t help themselves and toyed with players from NSW, Queensland and Victoria but inevitably the role fell to a Western Australian in an almost perfect baton change with Garth.
The selectors decided to leave a Test match vacant in the middle there just to make a point and then gave poor old Ross Duncan just the one Test anyway. Pretty petty if you ask me.
When Bob Massie came along everyone was surprised that he took 16 wickets in his first Test at Lord’s.
But not me – I always knew that was exactly what was going to happen. He was from WA after all. Half a century later and I am still predisposed to the idea that any fast bowler from Western Australia will be genetically superior to his counterpart from any other state.
Max Walker had me in a flummox as I had no theory on Tasmanians because he was the only one when he came along. I figured, as a fast bowler, he would have gone to WA but Victoria was closer to home and that is where the boat dropped him off. It is amazing what you can come up with to make the narrative fit your theory when you are pushed to do it.
Australian captain Greg Chappell batting against the West Indies at Brisbane in 1979. (Photo by Adrian Murrell/Getty Images)
I didn’t know much about wicketkeeping at that stage and assumed that Lillee and Marsh came together as a package because Marsh was used to catching the ball when Lillee was bowling. I thought maybe Taber and Renneberg had been a similar but less successful package prior to them.
Of all aspects of my theory the Lillee/Marsh package finished up being the most credible.
Doug Walters – well he was from NSW – he could bat, he could bowl, and he could field. He was a great all-round guy and everyone seemed to love him. They sang “there’s only one Dougie Walters” on the SCG hill. So he was a definite, regardless of him not fitting into my selection model on any grounds.
Ian Chappell, I was a bit confused about. He was a batter but he came from South Australia. My theory was ruined.
It wasn’t until I was watching a match and saw he was bowling that I realised that he was actually picked as a spinner because he was South Australian, but it turned out he could bat too. The selectors tried this again more recently with Steve Smith and it seems to have worked okay then too.
When Greg came along, I guess it was okay that Ian had brought his little brother along to play too but again it clashed with my system until I found out he could also bowl spinners, so the yin-yang of Test cricket selection was back in balance.
There was no Queenslander in the team on a regular basis. Out of the good of their hearts the selectors gave one a game every now and again, but I figured if they had never had good enough players to win the Sheffield Shield, they probably didn’t have good enough players to get picked for Australia.
As for choosing a captain I surmised that you either opted for the best player like in my brothers under 10s team or just the oldest guy. Chappelli had a moustache just like my Uncle Len so I figured he must have been the oldest and was as such a logical choice.
So, there was my foolproof method on how to pick an Australian side based on my observations as a seven-year-old.
I was discussing that I was going to write this article with my son who is not a great deal older than that now. We laughed as I went through my childish logic and explained how my theory totally collapsed when Ian Redpath retired and there wasn’t a single Victorian batter left in the side.
We then realised that Dean Jones has been the only Victorian batsman able to cement a career spot in the side over the last 50 years since the development of my theory.
My son enquired where the best players actually did come from.
“All over” I told him.
“The best Australian batsman I have seen is from SA – just ahead of a player from Tasmanian and one from NSW.”
“The best spinner was Victorian.”
“The best fast bowler was the WA guy I told you about above but only just ahead of a guy from NSW.”
The best wicketkeeper was from NSW but he moved to WA so he had better opportunities just like Rowdy and TJ all those years ago. It paid off for him too.
“But dad” he said “you just mentioned all the states except Queenslad”, where he was born. “What are they best at?”
Shane Warne. (Photo by Hamish Blair/Getty Images)
I started to think, and he asked who their best batsmen were – “well” I explained “they were from SA, NSW and the West Indies. Their best bowlers were from NSW and the West Indies. Their best all-rounder was from England.”
“Haven’t they won the Sheffield Shield then yet Dad?” he asked. I told him that “yes, they had”.
“Well???????” he asked me forlornly.
After turning the question over in my mind for what must have seemed like an eternity to him, it suddenly struck me.
“Queensland has the best 12th men. If ever you need a 12th man – pick a Queenslander”, I told him definitively.
