At times it feels like there can be a dark art to cricket selection, a sense of mystery, and I’m sure it plays a major role in the near all pervasive public debate that accompanies it.
Everyone has a theory, and everyone from the decision-makers down can play favourites.
With that as a background, George Bailey is proving an entirely different case as chief selector. He has the disciplines of a fine batsman, see it early, be decisive, his calm rationale appeals enormously, and it will guard against the hot rushes that we all feel across any series, red or white ball, and our urges with selection.
Unless you’re presiding over an all-time great eleven, you need selection tension to ensure competitive performance and standards. That’s a truth.
But you don’t want a level of uncertainty that prompts anxiety and insecurity and sabotages best performance.
By the end of the Trevor Hohns’ regime, there was a ‘treat them mean’ approach, which I think appealed to many a cricket fan.
The ‘hunger games’ duel for places in the previous Ashes squad, it was riveting to observe but it was uncomfortable for the participants, and there’s not much evidence to say it was ultimately successful.
And the last contract announcements? They were marked by the fact that not all available contracts were allocated, players were deliberately left on edge.
Again, popular with cricket fans, no doubt. But did it prove counterproductive? Is there evidence to say that it was successful?
George Bailey is revealing an entirely different philosophy. He clearly wants players to know where they stand and know what their prospects are. He believes it’s one of the four tellers of best performance.
He demonstrated that when he tipped his hand early on Marcus Harris and the opening position, and if you heard him on SEN’s Dwayne’s World on Monday, it was clear that the T20 heroics of Mitch Marsh would not see him parachuted into the Test team.
There was a much bigger game at play there.
Yesterday’s 15-man squad was eminently sensible.
It landed in front of me, and those were the two words that came to mind: eminently sensible, and it answered most of the questions we’d been kicking around.
We’ve all been obsessing over the batting, but it’s the bowling that’s going to create the most intrigue, to listen to Bailey yesterday was to realise that.
Last summer Australia went with its frontline foursome, and they couldn’t get it done.
There were signs that change should have been made for the Gabba decider, and that wasn’t a hindsight judgement.
For those of us living the series there was a very real suggestion of that going in to the Gabba, but occupation proved the law and a weary Australian attack wilted as India pulled off a heroic victory.
That should serve as a cautionary tale for the five-Test series against England, when Australia retained the Ashes on English soil it adopted a squad mentality with the bowling unit, and it should do so again.
Australia has Jhye Richardson raring to go, with oodles of red-ball form. It’s a great contrast to the talisman who have been doing their work with the white ball.
That’s why I think Richardson should play at the Gabba in preference to Mitch Starc.
Starc is essential in Adelaide. He’s the best pink-ball bowler that Test cricket has yet seen and there will be good combinations for the five Tests that are going to define this summer.
Now, I know that rotation is a dirty word in cricket selection, but occupation failed Australia in the last battle, so put it this way: it’s time to ‘box clever’.
Australia has just done that at the T20 World Cup, and George Bailey should be emboldened to do it again.