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Damien crucified as selectors backed into corner

Source: The Australian - September 21, 2005

THE selectors should be congratulated for making belated but necessary generational change to the Test side after Australia's surrender of the Ashes. Unfortunately, they've shot the wrong man.

The dropping of Damien Martyn from the Test team is one of the harshest calls handed to an Australian batsman.

He is a sacrificial offering following the failure of the four-man selection panel of chairman Trevor Hohns, David Boon, Andrew Hilditch and Merv Hughes to act more quickly and decisively when Matthew Hayden struggled with his unprecedented slump.

Martyn, almost 34, has averaged below 40 in just one of his past 10 series: the Ashes.

Contrast this with Hayden, 34 next month, who went 30 innings without a century before his courageous but belated 138 in the fifth Test at The Oval.

On the Mark Waugh cruise-control meter, Martyn could have played on for years. Waugh was dumped, aged 37, after averaging better than 35 in just three of his final 12 series.

Martyn's replacement in the 13-man squad to play the Super Series Test in Sydney next month, Brad Hodge, is unlikely to play.

All-rounder Shane Watson is expected to be included at the expense of Martyn as part of a new five-bowler philosophy which will involve a marked change in the team's structure, with Stuart MacGill favoured to play as a second spinner.

There was ample room for the selectors to punish Martyn for his poor Ashes tour, in which he averaged under 20, by leaving him out of the final XI without dumping him from the squad.

Now already behind Hodge, 30, and Watson, 24, it will take a miracle for Martyn to resurrect his Test career given that the panel sacked Darren Lehmann at a similar age less than a year ago.

No amount of platitudes from the selectors about going back to state cricket and working hard can change the fact that, on any statistical basis, Martyn has been crucified. The panel may be right. Martyn might be gone as a Test player, but then why retain him in the one-day team? One-day cricket is a young man's game and Martyn will be 35 before the next World Cup in 2007. Age is a criteria now openly discussed by Hohns for limited-overs selection.

The selectors backed themselves into a corner by continuing to support Hayden during more than a year of poor performances, a staggering reward even for a player who had performed so brilliantly in the previous four years.

It set a low benchmark in Australian cricket, except it was not a benchmark applied to Martyn. From Hayden's previous century in July 2004, up to and including his drought-breaking 138 in the final Test at The Oval, the Queenslander scored 980 at 33.79 with just that one ton.

In the same period, when both played in all of Australia's 17 Tests, Martyn made 1250 runs at 50 with five centuries. He was man of the series against Pakistan, a series that ended in January this year, and averaged 78 on the New Zealand tour in March.

On any rational, historical or statistical basis Hayden should have gone during the Ashes series to begin the regeneration of a side which will see half its players aged 35 or older by the time England arrives to defend the Ashes in little more than a year.

But despite Hayden's extended slump going into the tour of England, the selectors did not include a reserve opening batsman in the Test squad, even though Mike Hussey, the opener in waiting, was in the one-day team.

Hussey, 30, continued to play county cricket but there was seen to be problems with protocol bringing in a player from outside the squad and the impact it would have on Hodge in particular.

So Hayden willed himself to a century at the death knell, leaving the selectors in a bind as to who should go to begin the renewal.

It was as if the selectors decided to drop one ageing player from the Test and one-day squads. Hayden rightly went from the one-day side, to be replaced by Simon Katich, 30, at the top of the order. The NSW captain has a fine record opening for his state in one-day cricket.

There are now only five places for batsmen in the Australian side, not six as there has been for most of the past 30 years, and enormous pressure falls on the shoulders of an inexperienced Watson with both bat and ball.

The ideal is to spread the workload, helping to continue the careers of precious antiques Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath while easing in young tearaway Shaun Tait or providing the option for a second spinner.

The changes may continue to unfold over the summer and unless Hayden makes another big score soon, he will be one of them.

- MALCOLM CONN