And as we cruise towards the final Test of the Ausralian summer we are, once again left scratching the old noggin and trying to figure out what this all means.

This, at least in this particular instance, being the inclusion of Glenn Maxwell in the twelve, presumably as the spinning all-rounder on a Sydney track that was rumoured to be headed back towards its old status as a happy hunting ground for the tweakers.

Selection panels move in mysterious ways, like bees through the stomach, though from time to time you can examine the entrails of a particular decision and take a fair guess at the thinking behind the seemingly strange circumstance.

In this case, you'd have figures they were looking at the rumours and covering the options, and then decided the rumours proved unfounded, so the four quicks option was deemed the appropriate way to go. Fine. Tick.

Given that situation you might then start wondering why Lyon gets the run, when you could have gone with the other spinner (the all-rounder) at Seven, and the answer there is fairly obvious.

We're covering the bases on the assumption that Watto ceases to be a functional part of the pace battery.

Or, at least that's the way it looks, which is quite fine from where I'm sitting, provided Watto becomes responsible for lifting that conversion rate in the batting department. He should be good enough to do it, and if he can't he can't hold down either a place in the batting order or, more particularly, the vice captaincy.

That's ironic in its own way because he gained his slot at the top of the order because we needed another bowler to cover for Mitchell Johnson in the last Ashes series over there. Now, it seems, there's a very real prospect that all-rounder Mitch may have to bat Seven to cover for non-bowling Watto.

Actually, I'm inclined to read something else into Maxwell as twelfth man, particularly if he's kept on hand in Sydney rather than being shot off to fulfil further Big Bash commitments with the Melbourne Stars, whose next game happen to be at The Gabba this evening.

Having hauled him away from the white ball whack it gave a chance to give him a red ball workout, which is, of course, something he won't be getting a lot of between now and late February. At least that's the way I'm inclined to think after reading this in The Australian this morning.

Anyway, having named the four quicks, Michael Clarke has done the right thing and won the toss that's where we cut this little effort short, right about the time they're about to do the silent bit for Tony Greig...