Dear Andrew

Mr Andrew Hilditch
Chairman of Selectors
Cricket Australia
25 Off With The Pixies Drive
Adelaide SA 5000


Dear Andrew,


I read with interest the 25 players you and your fellow selectors consider the most important to the future of Cricket Australia (not to be confused with Australian Cricket). You certainly have selected an interesting bunch of fellows designed to take us to England in two years and regain the Ashes. In case you've forgotten them, its that little wooden urn some tart gave to an English upper crust lad she was trying to impress. Replicas could be seen in every English player's hand after the Sydney Test. Oh, I forgot. Pity you missed it.

I'm just wondering Andrew, in much the same way as the rest of Australia is, including several politicians from NSW, how it is that you have omitted Simon Katich from the contract list? Is it not enough that despite being the best captain of his generation he has never been offered the job in the Baggy Green cap? The really strange thing to fathom is that media speculation is claiming age as an exclusion factor because the Katich lad has reached 35 years of experience, or is that age? Yet Michael Hussey and Ricky Ponting are both older and David Hussey only twelve months younger and they have all earned a contract.

Maybe it's his form that concerns you Andrew. Below is a graph of batsmen's contribution to the Test team since we lost in England ... not to be confused with the last time we lost to England.

It makes interetsing reading doesn't it Andrew, the fact that you have effectively ended the career of one of the three best batsmen who have played for the team since what the former captain described as "the darkest hour". Not only that, but to both the previous skipper and the current skipper you have given contracts with form which is markedly worse than Katich and your intended replacement, Hughes, has failed to impress in all but the second innings of a dead Test in New Zealand and makes slip fielders nervous when his name is read out in team lists.

Something else to consider re Katich: since he was recalled the Australian team in 2008, only Alastair Cook has scored more Test runs. In case you're not paying attention, that's only one other player in the rest of the world.
Katich is not your first mistake Andrew, if we are to be honest, but at least your own form is consistent. There are a few more among the list announced today with spinners included for the short forms of the game but not the Test incumbent, Michael Beer, who has apparently gone flat. We know you won't pick Nathan Hauritz as a Test bowler again or you would have used him last summer, right? The fast bowling quintet who couldn't bowl England out before the third Kookaburra, are of course retained. Strange days indeed.

Still, there are some positives and Patrick Cummins is right among them, although if we are serious about the next England trip, some of his NSW speedster team mates better soon be considered. Khawaja and Ferguson will eventually bat at three once Ponting agrees to come home and do the vacuuming and Shaun Marsh will win Katich's opening position once the Taylor et all committee report on what's wrong with Cricket Australia (not to be confused with Australian Cricket).

With that in mind Andrew, any job prospects post September?


Peter Langston