Sydney 2013: Into Day Three...

A glance down the figures on the scorecard might suggest things are sitting in a postcode that's comfortably adjacent to Hunky Dory at 6 for 342, a lead of 48 with four wickets in hand, but when you glance at the names, the methods of dismissal and the bowling figures things aren't quite so rosy.

And while we're looking for answers to questions we keep on getting handed new questions.

One of them came in the form of Watto's request for his old slot at the top of the innings back. The full story's here and suggests he's reconsidering his future as an all-rounder though he still seems to be keen to bowl in the shorter formats. This, mind you, in a story that also points out he broke down in Melbourne after bowling 47 overs in Hobart.

That, of course, came in the wake of the Hilfenhaus injury, and represented more than you might have asked him to bowl under different circumstances, though one also notes twenty in the first innings with the broken down Hilfie on 12.2, Starc 24 and Siddle 25 and a bit. Hmmm, hmmm and hmmm again.

Bowling Watto is an important part of an attack if he's there and fit. Assuming he isn't bowling and someone breaks down, what then? Just this once, Watto?

In any case, whether he bowls or not, while he's looking for the old opening spot back, Hughes, it seems (at least on the basis of this story is determined to make the number three spot his own, which would look good for Watto (there's one rival out of the way).

The problem, however, at least from where I'm sitting, lies in run outs.

Watto and Katich had their moments, Watto and Warner the same, and now, of course, we've Warner and Cowan and the run outs keep coming.

Cowan blew a big chance to settle his spot (and undermine the Watto to open argument) by getting himself run out yesterday, and the Hussey run out on Clarke's call suggested it's an area that needs work, but, seriously, against this attack on this deck someone out of Warner, Hughes and Clarke should have gone on to the ton. On yesterday's evidence Johnson isn't a Seven, and we'll probably get further confirmation in the second innings, which is where I'm directing the crystal ball at the moment.

Forty-eight runs on with four wickets in hand, it's obviously a question of how many more, and how long we last. Wade has had his moments along the way to 47 not, and you'd reckon we need a first innings lead of around 150 to avoid what looks like being a rather tricky little equation batting last.

Go into the change of innings a hundred on and you're looking at bowling Sri Lanka out for less than 250, which might be quite doable but would leave us chasing 150 on a deck that's starting to do something for Herath and Dilshan. At this point, after 88 overs we've had 47 from the seamers, who've managed 1/210, while Dilshan's 19 overs of offies have delivered 1/58 while Herath has returned 2/69 off 22.

The seamers, in other words, aren't breaking through, and are going at four an over, while the tweakers are getting wickets (two of 'em caught behind, Clarke caught in the deep) at around three an over. Chase 150 in that last dig and you're looking at batting around fifty overs, which will almost certainly go overwhelmingly to the spinners.

Could be very tricky, that one, and it becomes trickier with each increment in the ask.

If we can manage a lead of 150, the notional bowl them out for less than figure runs up to 300.

I think, in other words, that chasing 150 batting last is going to be tricky. Maybe not impossible, but definitely tricky.

So it's down to how well Wade can bat with the tail this morning, and how long the whole operation can last once we've got past lunch, if, indeed, we get that far. I'll also be interested to see how we bowl the second time around, partly because I suspect we're looking at a track that's moving towards what we're likely to encounter in India…

Sydney 2012: Into Day Two...

I was late switching on the TV yesterday, and when I did they were right into the Tony Greig tributes, so I didn't get a chance to pick up on the forensic details about the pitch, so I've got no way of knowing whether there was anything in the track to justify Michael Clarke's decision to insert Sri Lanka after he won the toss.

On paper, with the eleven we chose to take into the game, you'd reckon there'd have to be plenty of soup in there for the quicks, and on the evidence of the first session you'd be forced to conclude that anything that was seen in there was, largely, an illusion.

There were plenty of comments early about the four quicks being used as a means to avoid rotating someone out to bring Starc back in, but I'm more inclined to look at it as a means of evaluating the stocks we've got on hand, the same way that playing Maxwell at Seven or a traditional Sydney turner would have given us a good look at the off-spinning options.

The same way winning the toss and batting might have done a bit to sort out where we are with the top three, and would have delivered those two offies into the position where they'd be bowling last on a wicket that usually turns before the end of Day Five.

But no, for whatever reason, we went in with the four quicks and the chance to sort out a pecking order among them, and the simultaneous rating of Mitchell Johnson as a de facto all-rounder batting Seven. The alternative to that, one assumes, would have been to rest Lyon and go with Maxwell in the spinning department, batting him at Seven.

So, what have we established in the bowling department?

Well, for a start, it's obvious Bird now comes into contention for a regular spot in an attack that's approaching the best we can put on the park. It's early days yet, but in a situation where you're looking at First Choices and Fill Ins Bird looks to be heading towards the former rather than the latter.

The First Choices are the group you'd be looking at a (close to) automatic selections when they're fit, the Fill Ins are the blokes you use to cover when someone isn't.

And second, if Mitch can't cut it with the bat when the time comes yesterday's bowling performance suggests a Fill In rating rather than a First Choice. On yesterday's evidence, if we're looking at a left arm quick, Starc is the first choice and Mitch fills the vacancy if he's not fit and available under the rotation policy.

Mitch looked a lot sharper with the new ball in Melbourne than he did bowling second change yesterday, and, in any case, I think you want him getting a run with the new ball and a licence to menace with the thing while it's still hard and bouncy.

In any case, on what appears to be a reasonable batting track at the moment, he gets his chance with the bat at some point over the next two days and again, possibly, on Day Five, when the track should be taking turn. That should give some indication as far as all-round Mitch is concerned.

The big question, and the one that remains largely unanswered, is how we get three ninety-over days out of the way without bowling anyone past that fifty over mark that supposedly brings an increased likelihood of injury. Your chances of doing that are far better with five front line bowlers, which is where all-round Mitch or bowling Watto become key factors.

That fifty over mark, of course, is probably able to be bent. Siddle, I think, would go closer to sixty or sixty-five, while an up and coming tyro tearaway (Cummins) might be flat out getting to forty.

I think it's sage to assume that our best three quicks (with associated tags) at the moment are Siddle as leader of the attack, go to man and workhorse, Starc as the lefty and Bird as the nagging economy man. He doesn't like the McGrath comparisons, but that's the role he'll probably be asked to fill. Pattinson, when fit, I think is the strike man, and you can probably cast your eye around the first class scene and spot contenders who could cover for each of those four, with Johnson/Starc being one obvious match.

So now, I guess, it comes down to how we do with the bat, with plenty of questions to be sorted out on what should be a fairly decent batting track against an attack that shouldn't threaten. With these two innings as the last of the long form until we head to India in February there are several boxes that can be ticked or replaced with question marks.

The inquisitive reader may be wondering, amid all this, about Hughesy's assessment of the opposition, who showed a bit more stickability than expected on a track that didn't have the demons you might have expected from the four quicks and send them in side of things. Assessing the opposition, however, isn't really my thing, particularly when the opposition are ranked at Number Six, and are apparently unlikely to be playing any more Test cricket in the immediate future.

The two Sri Lankan commentators on the radio yesterday were doing a rather detailed forensic job on their Test prospects, with Russell Arnold, in particular, impressing me with his attention to detail, consideration of possibilities and analysis of the factors involved. Much of it went by to the keeper since I don't have anything resembling a detailed knowledge of the Sri Lankan cricket sign except that they're apparently close to broke, that Mahela has problems with the board at home and they're probably going to be depending on the money they can pull in from the short forms to keep things viable.

That said, yesterday's display with the bat suggests there's talent there, and they're going to be competitive when circumstances aren't too obviously weighed against them. Now it's a matter of seeing how they bowl.

The logical assumption is, of course, that we'll match their three hundred odd today, and hopefully bat on well into tomorrow establishing a lead that will need to be run down. That'll be difficult with just the five specialist bats plus 'keeper Wade and all-round Mitch, so you'd be inclined to suspect a possible lead around 150, a Sri Lankan response through Day Four and the prospect of a potentially nasty chase on the last day.

At least that's the way it looks now. Let's see what happens in an hour's time (he wrote as the computer clock ticks past 8:23 Queensland non-Daylight Saving Time)…

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...

Melbourne 2012: Afterwards

When you're not working to a deadline and you don't have anything much to write about the solution is fairly straightforward. Write nothing and wait. Something will turn up. It always does, and the wait allows time for certain other issues to sort themselves out.

It would have been easy to follow Friday's dismal performance from Sri Lanka with a gloating anticipation of glorious victories in India and a successful Double Ashes campaign, which would have been a mistake, because we're going to be doing it tough in both environments and events over the weekend have arguably made things tougher.

What we saw of Friday was the dismantlement of an injury-weakened batting lineup by a bowling group that was starting to hit its straps, following a rather good bit of fielding that got the first wicket.

And it was an injury-riddled batting lineup operating in circumstances where they weren't going to be comfortable even if those who weren't able to front at the crease were absent due to muscle tears or food poisoning rather than broken digits caused by the impact of hurtling cricket balls.

That said, Siddle, Johnson and Bird did their job well, and Lyon backed them up well enough so that the absence of Watson from the bowling crease didn't produce the sort of workload that ruled Siddle and Hilfenhaus out of Perth.

There was the predictable concern over the bowling lineup for Sydney, since the logical rotation would involve Siddle out for Starc, but the selection panel have, in the interim, thrown up an interesting one by going for Maxwell ahead of Khawaja in a move that would seem to be looking towards India rather than turning to the next logical cab off the rank.

The next logical cab will presumably slot into the space left by Hussey's retirement, which was the epitome of wait until something turns up to write about, wasn't it? But we'll be back to that because it wasn't the only thing that turned up.

Maxwell, one presumes, is being looked at as the spinning all-rounder who might go well in India, which is fair enough. See how he goes in Sydney, which is tipped to turn. That should reveal something.

Slot him into Six or Seven (with Wade at Six) with Clarke and Hussey moving up one and you might not have your strongest batting order, but it opens up possibilities assuming Johnson goes in at Eight with a charter as a bowling all-rounder.

That's assuming Sydney looks like a turner and you decide to play the two spinners. If that's not the case there's the possibility of resting Lyon, or naming Maxwell as drinks waiter (which would remove the see how he goes before India from the equation) and playing the four quicks with Johnson batting Seven as the all-rounder.

At 2-0 in the series with one to play that wouldn't hurt either.

If we play both spinners, spell Siddle. He's the go to man if things aren't running our way at the moment, so let's see who out of Johnson, Starc and Bird can slot into that role if he's out injured at some point over the next twelve months.

Hopefully the next go to man, or rather the man who'll remove the need to go to Siddle through The Double Ashes series will be Johnson, based on an article in The Australian (here).

Dennis Lillee's TUFF (Targets, stand Up, Front arm, Follow through) looks to be the formula to right the technical issues that creep into Johnson's action, and with the Target being a spot on the pitch rather than the batsman at the other end (though that'll come later, after the ball lifts off that nasty length), come Ashes time I'm looking forward to a further succession of finger injuries among batsmen playing for their country in front of crowds who definitely seem to rate him as a damp squib.

The English crowds definitely don't rate him, the English bats probably don't rate him and the prospect of proving them wrong will doubtless put a bit of fire in the belly.

Hughesy's tip: Watch the English media for the return of Mitchell's heartbroken mother.

We've also had the news that Watson apparently wants to be considered as a non-bowling batsman rather than an all-rounder, which is fair enough as long as he accepts that the rules that apply to other specialist bats also apply to him. That conversion rate will need to be addressed, and the Hussey retirement delivers him some sort of lifeline.

Ignoring the Maxwell selection, a fit Watson still batting at Four would mean a top six that reads Warner, Cowan, Hughes, Watson, Clarke, Khawaja with Wade at Seven and Johnson/Maxwell at Eight. That'd still be light on in the bowling department if you're looking at bowling 270 overs through three days without anyone going over fifty, but there's an obvious solution to that. Get 'em out quicker and you won't have to worry.

As far as the Hussey retirement is concerned, you'd probably have preferred it to come twelve months later when you look at issues relating to the first four, but it had to come some time, and he's getting out at the right time to give someone (presumably Khawaja) the chance to settle a place before England. Of course, you might prefer to be settling in somewhere other than India.

Maybe it's a glass half full attitude, but I'm fairly upbeat about both of those series. India don't appear to have their heart in the Test cricket bit recently, but I expect we'll be served up a regular diet of slow and low tracks with the odd raging turner. England, of course, will be different, and one assumes we'll be taking a squad of fifteen or sixteen on both tours, so let's do a bit of crystal ball gazing.

Based on the current twelve remaining fit we've got room for three or four more. Given the fact that Watson will be one of the extras, and two of them will be bowlers that only leaves room for one spare bat. Assuming there isn't a big move in the Shield aggregates over the rest of the season you'd figure the extra bloke will be Doolan, but I'd go slightly out on a limb and take Chris Rogers, who might be getting on a bit but has plenty of experience in English conditions.

Alternatively, if we're looking for a spare bat who can keep, that'd more than likely be Paine, though Chris Hartley has been among the runs in the Shield.

The bowling's more open, since it's largely a question of who hasn't broken down recently.

For India, with Lyon, Maxwell and Warner in the side and the likelihood that Clarke will also roll the arm over, the spin options look to be covered, so you'd take the four current quicks with two more to cover for injuries along the way. Assuming Pattinson isn't fit, I'd go Hastings and whoever finishes on top of the Shield wickets table for India. England is a little bit different, and not just because of the conditions.

Pattinson, one hopes, will be fit by that stage, and a fast bowling group of Siddle, Pattinson, Johnson, Bird, Starc and one more would look pretty sharp, so it's largely a question of continuing fitness with those five and what you're looking for in the other bloke.

You might go for the bloke who's going to do well in the conditions, do a fair bit of donkey work and swing the ball, but I'd be inclined to head for the fastest, most aggressive bloke going around at the top of the Shield table at the end of the season or, preferably, a fit Cummins.

I think you can take it as read that we'll find wickets that are conducive to fast bowling and conditions amenable to swing, and an English side that'll be looking to their fairly impressive array of quicks with support from Swann, so we might as well set out to fight fire with fire.

We're going to cop plenty from their media when we arrive, and the crowds while we're there, so an aggressive mindset will, I think, be helpful.

Which is probably where we should turn our attention to the other major story over the weekend, namely the passing of Tony Greig, but given the fact that I loathed the man's commentary while he was on Nine and I was still listening, you won't find him being mourned around these parts. Strangely, I didn't mind him when he was working elsewhere, which suggests an issue with the Channel Nine approach and how Mr Greig fitted into it.

The key bit here, I think, is the repeated use of the word provocative in the flow of tributes that have appeared since the news broke. If you're going to be provocative, you can expect a reaction, and since my reaction could be fairly described as contemptuous loathing, maybe I should leave it at that.

But I won't, because I see a lot of the same provocative behaviour in the English media and, when you get to the ground, the old Barmy Army, who we're told are part of the spectacle (or something). We're going to be copping a fair bit of that provocation over the next twelve months, so the question is what we do about it. With the Greig commentary it was easy. Turn him off and it won't bother you.

With the Barmy Army there's nothing you can do over there, so I'm hoping for an aggressive display from the pace bowling group and a stream, or at least a trickle, of batsmen retiring hurt to see how the reactions from the other side of the fence go. They do mockery and ridicule fairly well, so the only thing to do on their turf is to stand up and be counted.

Over here, things ought to be different. This is our turf, they're the visitors, and if they're going to mock and ridicule they should expect the same thing to be coming straight back at them.

I'd put an extra couple of conditions on anyone visiting an Australian ground and behaving in an obviously Barmy Army manner.

For a start, if they wear something that identifies them as an English supporter they should expect to pay a surcharge for beer at the ground, and forbidden to bring any noisemaking device into the ground. This should be clearly discriminatory and designed to rankle. They're out to rankle, so don't dish it out if you can't cop it back, boys.

Better, for my money, would be the issuing of a cake of soap to all inbound English supporters and the requirement that anybody engaged in obvious Barmy Army activity should be able to produce the article or face being evicted from the ground.

And if they use the items in question as part of their antics, there should be a message on the big screen at the ground like Yes, but are you actually going to use it?

Offensive? Quite possibly. But, on the other hand, if you want to dish it out…

Alternatively, of course, you could just sit down and watch what looks like being a fairly tight contest, which is what I'd prefer to do.

Without distractions.

What’s wrong with that concept?

Melbourne 2012: Day Two. The Watto Conundrum.

The difficulties that arise from the early to bed early to rise bit kicked in as I scrolled down the Twitter feed around four this morning to find a couple of comments on Shane Watson's fitness and future. That's an issue that had been given a fair pummelling on the radio commentary yesterday, and the first reaction was an ah, yes, more of the same.

Scroll down a bit further, though, and there's the report of the latest injury. That calf muscle is playing up again, and it raises questions on around four fronts.

So, with The Reader's indulgence, I'd like to explore them.

The first relates to potential, how we try to spot it at a young age and what happens when we think we've succeeded. Then there are the separate issues related to Watto's batting and bowling and, finally, there's the question of the vice-captaincy.

I'd need to get out the Bowen Schoolboys' scorebooks to check on it definitively, but I suspect my awareness of a Shane Watson may date back as far as 1991, when I took a busload of kids on a loop through south-east Queensland. This was something that had its origins four years earlier when two rather influential figures associated with Queensland Primary School Cricket approached me with a question about this idea they'd be kicking around.

One of them was the President of the State body, the other the State Coach (later the key powerbroker on the selection panel). Both came from the Ipswich Schoolboys coaching setup, which is, or was, from what I've seen a unique non-club-affiliated setup that offers Saturday morning coaching to primary school kids from Year One upwards. That bit is, I think, significant, because it means they've got the ability to look at kids from before they hit the Under-Eight group, which is where Junior Cricket tends to kick in.

It was also, and I think this also has some bearing on the way things turned out, a time when there was a genuine border war between the school cricket set-up and the state-wide Junior associations, and the war concerned priorities in the Under-Thirteen age group.

For years, the Juniors had selected representative sides in the Twelves, Fourteens and Sixteens, which left the schools free to do their thing in the Thirteens and Fifteens at a time when state carnivals run by the two separate bodies clashed, so kids had to go one way or the other.

There's also, in the south-east of the state, a couple of Sunday fifty over competitions, the Treloar (formerly Shell) Shield for the Year Sevens and McCasker Trophy for Year Sixes. The teams that play for these are one step below the regional sides that head off to the State Carnival, and the existence of the two competitions was, to put it rather bluntly, a pain in the neck when you weren't from the southeast corner and were looking to push kids towards State selection.

It was difficult to avoid the suspicion that the selection panel had already drawn up a list of players of interest (that was invariably denied, usually with some vehemence) and the NQ position tended to be that if we wanted to get our kids looked at properly we needed to get someone onto the selection panel, though there's more than one way to skin a cat.

Which is why, when Granty and Les cornered me and asked whether I reckoned they'd be able to get a game in Bowen if they put their Shell and McCasker sides on a bus and headed north, my response was an immediate and definite yes.

That first trip came in a marathon exercise in 1988, and involved games in Rockhampton, Bowen, Burdekin, Townsville, Pioneer Valley and Gladstone over the two week September vacation. They weren't going to repeat the exercise every year, which explains why, having hosted them in '88 and gone along for the ride while they headed to Townsville, I organised a bus trip for Whitsunday kids in 1989.

They repeated their exercise in '90 and that explains why I was back down there in '91, when there may well have been a Year Five kid with the surname Watson playing for their McCasker side against my bus trip kids.

There was definitely a Watson on the bus when they headed north on '92, because he belted my collection of local kids all around the park, scoring a substantial ton while I set about trying to get a wicketkeeper from Proserpine noticed in the other game, where an assortment of last year's Bowen kids, a couple of ring ins and a smattering of this year's side were taking on the Ipswich Shell side.

Watson was there in the West Moreton side when we went down to the State Carnival in Toowoomba later that year, and may have been the bowler Josh Movigliatti slapped for six off the last ball of the fiftieth over, securing the margin that eventually won us the game and put us on the road to winning the State Final.

He was there again when we went to Bundaberg next year, and went on to make that year's State side (which was obviously what he was being set for) and subsequently picked up a scholarship to Ipswich Grammar school, providing an education one suspects his parents may not have been able to afford to pay for. I'd organised something similar for a Bowen kid some five years earlier.

Watson subsequently made his way through the ranks, up to the point where he headed off to the Australian Cricket Academy and was subsequently lured for a spell in Tasmania before he headed back to the Sunshine State and subsequently relocated to Sydney.

Now, that's a rather longwinded ay of getting to the point, but the point here is that we're talking someone who has obviously been identified as something special from a very young age and been carefully nurtured to bring him along.

You probably guessed that already, but the long windedness is my way of pointing out that I saw some of the early part, and I'm not Kerry O'Keeffe saying He went to Ipswich Grammar, didn't he? I know he did, and I know the boarding master who would have largely set those arrangements in place. He was driving the Ipswich Schoolboys' bus in '88, '90 and '92.

Significantly, by the time he hit secondary school Watson had succumbed to the first round of stress fractures in a lengthy list of injury problems.

This word of mouth thing is something that will seem very clannish to an outsider, but it was obvious Shane was being set for stardom, and it was obvious from the time he was twelve. In Bundaberg, if I recall correctly, he hadn't had a great Carnival, and I saw him being spoken to quite seriously as he waited to bat in the Final. Spoken to, in fact, by the most influential member of the selection panel and the State President, both of whom, of course, had known him since he was knee high to a grasshopper.

Now, anyone who has done any coaching at all has probably dreamed of finding a kid who's good enough to play for Australia, and there aren't too many who actually have, but you don't get into contention for an Australian side without picking up significant word of mouth along the way and that word of mouth can often influence people to persist with players in situations where someone else might get dropped.

I'm not suggesting Shane needed to make runs in that State Final to make the State side, but the game was delicately poised, and I think that if West Moreton or Metropolitan West were going to win that game they needed runs from their star batting all-rounder.

I don't think you can look at Watson's current situation without being aware of those factors running through his background. He was set for stardom a long time ago, and he's been thought of in that Botham, Kallis, Flintoff role since he was in short pants.

So, where are we going with this one? What about the batting, the bowling and the vice-captaincy?

Let's turn the attention to the batting, because that was what he was doing yesterday when the failure to turn fifties into hundreds was put under the microscope.

Since age eleven he's been rated good enough to play for Australia, and along the way he's picked up influential supporters on the basis that he's good enough to bat in the top six, and will be a very useful third or fourth seamer. It's that combination that counts here.

If he's just being looked at as a bat, the failure to convert is, indeed, a strong argument for someone else. On current form you may well be inclined to look elsewhere if you're just looking at the batting.

And if you're just looking at the batting then, yes, he might be better suited to opening. Fine. But if you head down that direction it seems you're putting a line through the bowling side of things. Maybe not ruling it out completely, but definitely limiting that fourth seamer's role.

For mine, he bats somewhere between Three and Seven if he's going to bowl, and if he isn't he can open, but the same form factors that apply to every other specialist bat apply.

But there's the bowling to consider as well, and in the current situation where injury problems are being associated with sending down more than fifty overs in a Test, Watto's overs are a very important consideration. Take them out of the equation and go into a Test with three specialist seamers and a spinner and you're back in the situation where Siddle and Hilfenhaus were ruled out of Perth after Pattinson broke down in Adelaide.

In the current situation there's definitely a place for a third or fourth seamer who can bat in the first seven. In fact, if you're going to play a spinner (and that's another kettle of fish) that's where he has to bat because his fast bowling confreres and the spinner will be Eight, Nine, Ten and Jack.

There's a further significant consideration. When you're talking Watto and adding fourth seamer to the equation you're not just getting a common or garden fourth seamer. When he's fit and firing he's bordering on the genuinely quick side of things with the genuinely quick temperament to match.

We might be looking for someone in the Kallis mould, and he might not be quite there, but throw in that temperament and you've arguably got someone in, say, the same class as Botham with a significantly lower crap ball quotient.

Or a Flintoff who bats a bit better...

Which, I guess, underlines the Bowling Watto goes somewhere between Three and Six argument. If he's not going to bowl he may be leaving a vacancy for someone who can bowl and bat Seven with Wade at Six, but that starts to bring in questions about Hussey, doesn't it?

Then there's the Vice-Captaincy which is, from where I'm sitting, a mistake. Assuming the Vice-Captain is the heir apparent to the Captaincy there's no point in giving it to somebody who is, increasingly, looking like a game by game proposition.

If he's forced out through injury the Vice Captaincy should go elsewhere, and it shouldn't be automatically restored when he's back in the fold again.

On the question of his replacement it's obvious Khawaja is the first cab off the rank, which, in turn, opens up other possibilities if and when Watto returns. If Khawaja fires and question marks remain beside the names of Cowan or Hughes, Usman can bat Three and the survivor can open with Warner.

Given the fact that we're heading into the final Test on Wednesday, with the short turnaround there's the possibility of further fractures in the fast bowling ranks, so Khawaja's inclusion may raise the question of who bowls Watto's overs. In that regard, I'd return to my earlier point that anyone with aspirations for a specialist batting spot in the Australian top six would be well advised to work on his bowling.

In any case, since we've got a couple of relatively inconsequential One Day series after this we can bowl Siddle, Johnson and Bird to the point where they'll need to be rested, can't we?

The key questions for today, for Hughesy's money:

Does Johnson get his ton? If he does, might that justify a move up the order to Eight or, dare I say it, Seven? With Wade slotting into Six when Hussey goes and the fourth seamer who can bat a bit (and I'm thinking Henriques, Christian or perhaps Mitchell Marsh here) at Seven or Eight?

Oh, and do Siddle and company get the day off tomorrow?

Melbourne 2012: Day One

You can say what you like about the rotation policy (whether the beast actually exists or not, which is, of course, an entirely different kettle of fish) but it's hard to imagine an Australian attack doing much better than Messrs Siddle, Bird, Johnson and Watson did against Sri Lanka yesterday.

True, it was against a side batting first on a track that had a little early life (as they should if we're not going to paint a line down the middle of the thing).

Yes, it was against a side that was brought up on flat decks who don't like it bouncy in the first place, even if they have chosen to bat after winning the toss.

Agreed, it wasn't the best trio plus Watson we could put on the park, but Pattinson and Cummins are injured, and Starc, if you can believe the word that's being put out, had some niggles so it wasn't a rigid enforcement of a policy that may not exist (that's according to the same sources that're suggesting Starc wasn't quite right).

That, however, is the point.

We have an issue with fast bowlers breaking down, so it's increasingly unlikely we'll have our best trio plus Watson on the park at any time in the foreseeable future, though it's always nice to dream. What we need is a viable bowling group that's capable of taking twenty wickets between them, and this one definitely looked the part yesterday.

They might not look the part tomorrow, or next week, or at some unspecified time in the future, but they looked the part yesterday, and that's what mattered.

Bird, the controversial part of the equation (assuming the final decision was based on Bird or Starc rather than Johnson or Starc) looked the goods and did enough to suggest he'll be an ongoing part of the group. He'll probably bowl better and do worse in terms of results in the wickets taken column, and he may not go on at all, but he did enough to suggest he's going to be around for a bit.

Siddle was Siddle, which is what we expect, and the issue where he's concerned is to ensure that he's there rather than sitting on the sidelines, which means he may need to be rested some time, and you'd think Sydney may be the occasion.

And if Siddle was Siddle, Johnson was definitely Johnson, leaking a few runs when Sangakkara got onto him, but I think you want the bats fancying their chances against him.

And when Lyon came on to help with the mopping up he obliged.

Generally, I thought, it was a tidy performance. Maybe not a great one, but as good as you're entitled to expect.

It's a pity you can't say the same thing about the batting.

Another run out that results from ball watching was what actually did the damage, of course, but I definitely heard echoes of Geoffrey Boycott suggesting things wouldn't look so cheery if you added three quick wickets to the score as we went from 0/95 to 3/117.

Warner went the way he's always likely to go, perhaps a little earlier than he should have done to a trap that had obviously just been set, but that's the way he bats and he's there with a licence to give it a go.

Cowan's dismissal wasn't that bad a shot snared by a very good catch, but that's what happens at the top level, so you take the good with the bad even if you do occasionally get the rough end of the pineapple.

Which brings me to Hughes, and a second run out in a fairly short time span since his recall to the side. This is what shouldn't happen at the top level, though it's hard to see how the fault can be rectified when it does.

If you were running a squad of juniors with a couple of coaches on the ground you could address this sort of thing in a centre wicket practice session, with bowlers bowling, batsmen batting and running between wickets and the coaching staff keeping an eagle eye on proceedings, dismissing batsmen for failure to call correctly, failing to respond, turning blind or using any other pernickety excuse to pounce on bad habits before they become ingrained. One mistake and you're out, next please, and you'd be looking to run through the side in about half an hour.

You'd then send 'em off for a drink, call them back, deliver the lecture and remind them of the way things are supposed to work, and then spend an hour on a similar exercise with slightly less stringent supervision.

I'm not sure you'd be able to do that with an international side. Maybe a return to the basics as per the coaching manual would be possible by invoking an automatic $10 (or 20, or 100, the amount probably isn't important) fine for the team slush fund if someone is spotted watching the ball rather than going on the partner's call).

In a competitive environment you'd expect the entire dressing room to be on the lookout once one or two of them had been pinged for the hundred or whatever. After all, once you've been pinged there's a score to settle with the blokes who pinged you...

But it's something that needs thinking about. We hear all sorts of justifications for things that don't quite fit into the conventional thinking and the coaching manual, such as Dean Jones' suggestion that turning blind gave him extra microseconds to turn ones into twos, twos into threes. I'm sure it did, but if it also happened to cost a wicket or two the extra couple of runs probably wasn't worth it.

In any case, at 3/150 casing 156, Clarke and Watson at the crease, Hussey, Wade and the tail to come you'd be looking towards something between 400 and 450 as a par score by stumps today, and a win by an innings and a bit around the middle of the last session on Day Four, but there's many a slip between the cup and the lip…

Melbourne 2012: Pre-Test Prognostications

You might think, given the quantity of column inches devoted to the fast bowling rotation policy and the question mark over Michael Clarke's hamstring, there's not much that can be added to what's already out there, but as I set off around the morning lap around town last Friday I devoted a fair bit of thought to these matters, and though it's close to a week later I'm still inclined to have a go at transferring those thoughts into digital data.

Now, I should make it clear from the start that I don't have an issue with the rotation policy, arbitrary and inconsistent as it would seem to be. That inconsistency, by the way, is largely an issue because there seems to be one rule for the trundlers and another for the willow-wielders.

But we already knew that, didn't we? As Freddie Trueman was wont to remark the last bowler to receive a knighthood was Sir Francis Drake. That's not actually true either, but the astute reader will catch my drift.

So, predictably, Starc makes way for Bird to make his debut, and a bit over three hours before the start of the Boxing Day Test a squiz at the ABC News website has Clarke 'positive' about Boxing Day Test.

So let's tick all the boxes beside the Clarke will play argument.

He's the captain, so he gets to decide his own fate, having watched while Ponting did the same thing. Check.

He's a batsman. Say no more. Check.

There's a chance he'll pass Punter's record for the number of runs scored in a calendar year if he plays, and there's an outside chance he can run down Mohammad Yousuf's record number of runs in a calendar year. He'll need a triple century to do it (or perhaps a double and a single) to do it, which would effectively rule out any niggling questions about his hammie if he managed to do it.

Along the way, even if he doesn't reach an aggregate of 1789 for 2012, he's sitting on 1489, and may well pass Ponting's 1503 from 2003 and 1544 from 2005, Tendulkar's 1562 from 2010, Graham Smith's 1656 from 2008, and possibly Viv Richards' 1710 from 1976.

So there are records out there that might be rewritten. Check.

And there's the question of whether Watto is the right man to fill in the captaincy if Pup doesn't play. See He's the captain above. Check.

But let's pause for a moment and consider what happens if he does play, scores that triple century and does the hammie again, ruling him out of India and The Ashes. Worth the risk?

From where I'm sitting the whole chamozzle is the result of long standing issues that run all the way back to that fateful morning in 2005 when McGrath trod on the cricket ball, turned his ankle and lost us The Ashes.

You might think that's drawing a long bow, but stop for a moment and consider what ensued out of that loss.

First, we had a whole slew of retirements that were postponed until after we got the urn back in 2007. Virtually every member of that 2005 side played on until things were put right, and when you're looking at the who else could do the job as skipper bit today question, the first thing you note is the absence of established senior players apart from Messrs Clarke and Hussey.

Then, when we'd got the urn back we promptly yielded it again in 2009, with the Mitchell Johnson issue influencing team selection (we might need Watto to bowl, so how do we fit him in the eleven? Well, I guess he has to open) and subsequent desire on Ponting's part to go over and bring the thing back again.

The result of all that is a batting order where One, Two and Three are still finding their feet, and while we've possibly got an adequate substitute waiting in the wings the uncertainty about the top means you might be tempted to play it sort of safe by giving Pup a run.

Actually, if you take the building up the stocks argument that is used to justify rotating the quicks, Clarke should not play. Give Khawaja the run and spell Hussey for Sydney so either Khawaja gets a second go or Doolan gets a guernsey to see how he looks.

After all, Starc gets rested to make sure he's fit for India and England, and slots into a pace battery that reads (at the moment, fully fit) Siddle, Starc, Johnson, Bird, Watson with Pattinson, Cummins, Hilfenhaus, Hastings and any number of other contenders lurking on the fringes waiting for a chance to prove their fitness.

I'm fairly upbeat about getting a strong attack out of that bunch, a collective of seven to nine bowlers who can be mixed and matched without losing too much.

But when it comes to the batting, no, we have to play Clarke (or Ponting or Hussey, take your pick, the name's not important, it's the principle) because he's the best we've got for that job even if he's got a question mark over fitness, form or whatever.

I recently heard someone ask what happened to South Australia's Callum Ferguson, who seemed, at one point, to be the next cab off the batting rank. Well, it's obvious, isn't it? He might have been scoring runs at the time but we don't do rotations as far as the batting's concerned, because batsmen are less likely to break down...

But it is, and arguably has always been, a batsman's game…