Slow passages in play during a Test match are prone to bring forth remarks from commentators that merit a little musing on the morning walk.Take, for example, the remark attributed to Michael Holding by West Indian commentator Fazeer Mohammed that the West Indian line-up of the late seventies didn't engage in sledging.

The initial response would be they didn't sledge because they didn't need to, but I think things go deeper than that.

There is more than one way to skin a cat, and just because you've removed the verbal aspect that doesn't mean you're looking at a side that lacks menace and serious intent.

Looking at the classic bowling line-up of Roberts, Holding, Garner and Croft the batsman would have plenty to worry about without taking the odd sledge into account.

Look at the individuals involved....

Start with Andy Roberts the stone-faced assassin with two quite separate and equally lethal bouncers, and contrast him with Michael Whispering Death Holding, the stealth killer of the outfit.

Then, at first and second change you've got Joel Garner banging the ball in short from about ten feet in the air and Colin Croft going wide on the return crease and spearing the ball in at your upper torso.

With a line up like that you probably don't have to sledge, but things go a bit deeper than that.

Consider, for a start, the likelihood that Clive Lloyd, as he analysed the lessons learned on the West Indies 1975-76 tour of Australia, considered sledging and probably dismissed the idea as more or less pointless.

For a start, Lloyd never struck me as the sledging type, but again I suspect there's a further point. As an astute strategist who concentrated on developing his own side's strengths Lloyd probably realised that there's not much point in engaging the enemy on one of his strong points.

After all, when it comes to sledging it has generally been a case of Australia first, daylight second.

Then, of course, there's the question of what actually constitutes sledging.

On-field banter has probably been part of the game since W.G. grace was in short pants, and I'd defy anyone to draw a definitive line between encouraging your team mates and an unfavourable assessment of the opposition batsman's technical prowess.

I mean, you could, but as soon as you did there'd be some smart cookie finding a way around it.

Take, for example, the case where a bouncer has just about removed the batsman's head and the 'keeper remarks that someone must be wearing his brown jockettes today. Sledging? Intimidation? Or a blunt assessment of the batsman's probable internal state?

From their earliest days in the Under-12s kids are encouraged to 'talk up' their team mates in the field, it's probably no surprise to learn that many junior coaches have a definite role allocated to 'the talk man'.

If you can find the right kid, he's worth his weight in gold.

They don't always know when to stop, of course.

At the Queensland Primary Schools' Carnival in 1992 my attention was drawn to the fact that my designated talk man who'd been assigned twelfth man duties that day, was carrying out his regular role from the fine leg boundary.

Given the fact that Under 12 kids aren't the most imaginative creatures on Earth, the content of the on-field 'talk up' tends to become more than a little repetitive.

Middle stump’s having a party, let’s crash it! might have a certain je ne sais quoi the first time you hear it, but it gets a bit ordinary after the umpteenth iteration.

But then, so did Bowled, Warner.

And when the kids make their transition into the adult ranks they learn pretty quickly that anyone who's too thin-skinned isn't going to last very long. That's the case in Australia, anyway, and I'd be surprised if the same thing wasn't true to some extent throughout the rest of the cricketing world.

And if yer actual sledging isn't quite as prevalent in other countries they've probably got their own versions of sharp practice deeply ingrained in their own cricketing culture.

While that classic West Indian line-up might not have been prone to sledge, there's very little doubt that some of their successors were.

Cries of Hit the coward, for example, might be written off as non-sledges due to lack of expletive content, but there's no doubt that they're intended to intimidate, and I can't help recalling a certain imbroglio between Steve Waugh and Curtley Ambrose in the West Indies in 1995.

Don't cuss me, man might be fair enough, but in a case where the remarks that were found to be offensive were a fairly blunt response to what seemed awfully like an officially malevolent glare you're not talking about a one-way street.

No, the West Indies team under Clive Lloyd mightn't have sledged, but I think that was one element in a very carefully constructed strategy that went as far as an insistence on the team blazer when players were in airport departure lounges.

At a time when Australian cricketers wore more or less what they liked in transit between venues, there was no way you could describe the West Indian side as quietly inconspicuous.

On the field, however, it was very much a case of careful tweaking to emphasise West Indian strengths and minimise the few weaknesses that anybody managed to identify.

But that's another kettle of fish.

Remarkable, isn’t it?

After a fairly close Ashes series that had two sides playing, at various times, between about seventy-five and eighty percent of capacity and went pretty much down to the wire we see a one-day series that went that close to a seven-nil whitewash.

And during that series we went from around seventy-five percent to very close to one hundred and the opposition slumped into the bottom half of the seventies.

All those numerical ratings are extremely subjective, of course, but regardless of that, what was it that changed?

Both sides went into the series making a couple of changes with a view to the upcoming Champions Trophy, so what was it that brought Australia to the point where they were more or less playing to potential?

It’s obvious that there were a couple of more or less forced changes to the side that ended up paying off.

Resting Ponting was always going to happen, given the cluttered playing schedule over the next few months. One wonders whether he really needed to be rushed back for the tail end of the one day series, particularly since that you’re looking at two England-Australia flights in a fairly short time-span. Admittedly, he was straight back in the thick of things when he got back, but two observations.

One: Did we really need him back in the side that soon? Sure, his presence made a difference, but if things were going to get tight towards the end of the series I’d rather see whether the younger players can lift to the new challenge rather than looking to an older head to save the day.

Two: Ponting’s absence gave a couple of the other players a chance to do something that they weren’t going to do while he was there. More or less an extension of the first point, perhaps, but in a series that doesn’t count for very much in the big scheme of things did we really need him back at all?

If the answer is that we wanted to give him a couple of warm-up games before the Champions Trophy, fair enough, but you’d still be inclined to question those two lengthy intercontinental flights.

A couple of the other changes were more or less injury-related and raise questions about the way we approached the Ashes Series.

First, the Brett Lee question. Lee came back strongly after missing the Ashes series through on-going injury issues. There were enough options in the one-day squad to cover if he didn’t come back (or broke down again) whereas in the Ashes series his injury issues restricted our options when we were quite demonstrably having problems taking twenty wickets.

Second, the injury to Brad Haddin gave an up-and-coming ‘keeper a chance to show his wares and Paine definitely looks to be a handy long-term proposition.

On the other hand, if this had been an important series would the selectors have been tempted to let and keep Haddin playing through injury, hoping he’d make it through, in much the same way that they seemed to keep Lee on hand during the Ashes in the hope that he’d eventually (possibly) come good?

Apart from Paine, the other changes to the quad weren’t exactly new faces, of course, but Ferguson, in particular looks to be a fairly promising prospect and is obviously the next cab off the rank for the middle order in the Test side. Assuming that young Hughes comes back having dealt with the questions that were raised through the first part of the Ashes series we’ve got a couple of interesting options for the Test side in the immediate future.

In the meantime, it’s off to South Africa for the Champions Trophy, where we’ve got games against West Indies, Pakistan and India in the pool stage of the competition. Presumably, we need to win two out of those three to be sure of progressing to the semi-finals, where we’d probably be lining up against South Africa or Sri Lanka. Or possibly New Zealand, or a reinvigorated England, if such a beast is a possibility.

But assuming we can roll the West Indies (likely, you’d think given the selection ructions over there) if we can’t beat one of India or Pakistan we’re going to be pushed to knock over South Africa or Sri Lanka.

Time will tell.

From there, before the domestic season kicks in, it’s off to India for another seven one-dayers before the home test series against West Indies and Pakistan. It’ll be interesting to see how we approach the selection issues associated with that tour.

Gazing into the crystal ball I’d be inclined to rest Mike Hussey on form grounds, if nothing else and slot Marcus North into his place, with the expectation that he’d be doing his share of bowling. Assuming that Mitchell Johnson needs a rest along the way, the obvious replacement would probably be Doug Bollinger, but I’d be inclined to be a little more adventurous and opt for NSW all-rounder Moises Henriques...

But time will tell.

In the wake of a second successive loss of the Ashes on English soil, I may as well have a go at the subject of What’s Gone Wrong With Australian Cricket?

After all, over the past few weeks there’s been an inordinate quantity of column-inches and on-air time devoted to the subject, so why shouldn’t Hughesy have a go as well?

If I haven’t exactly rushed to publish my thoughts on the matter, it’s because I don’t see any willingness on the part of The People Who Make Such Decisions to bite the bullet and admit that there are a couple of things that might not be wrong but aren’t exactly right either.

There are any number of ways you could approach the question. You could, for instance head down the road of lamenting the loss of Hayden, Gilchrist, McGrath and Warne and ask where we’re likely to find their like again.

The answer to that question, of course, is that we won’t.

Much as we’d like to see it, there won’t be another carbon copy of any of those guys. There will be a new wave of players who will, in their own ways, be as dominant as those four were in their own ways. Maybe not four in the same team at the same time, but they’ll emerge.

But if you’re looking at the answer to the original question (What Went Wrong?) why not start at the top and work downwards? After all, it was the guys up there that made the some of the decisions that resulted in the 2-1 score line.

Sure, there were factors beyond their control that affected the result, but by definition, those things are beyond their control and therefore can’t be addressed. For example, regardless of their standing in the world rankings we’re not likely to see an Australian or English umpire standing in an Ashes series, and it’s been a long time since an Australian player has been able to influence English selection policies to our own advantage.

No, you take a blunt look at the things you can control and figure out what could have been done better.

When you do that you need a yardstick to measure degrees of success or failure, and there’s one that’s straightforward, even if it looks like you’re setting the bar too high.

Quite simply, the only success rate that’s not going to raise issues is 100%, and even in the unlikely event of that strike rate being achieved consistently over anything beyond the odd back-to-back series then there are probably going to be a couple of ticks in boxes labelled Could Have Been Better.

Of course, when you start looking at things in those terms there are going to be some issues influential figures would prefer not to see raised. So let’s look at the five results and ask Why didn’t we win this one?

1st Test: Cardiff: Match drawn
England 435 and 252/9; Australia 674/6d. Simple. We couldn’t take twenty wickets. Sure, we got nineteen, but nineteen ain’t twenty.

2nd Test: Lords: England win by 115 runs
England 425 and 311/6d; Australia 215 and 406. Same as the first. Failed to take twenty wickets. Worse than that, the bowlers leaked runs and didn’t score them when they mattered. Had we been able to do that, regardless of a couple of questionable umpiring decisions, we wouldn’t have ended up well short chasing 520.

3rd Test: Edgbaston: Match drawn
Australia 263 and 375/5; England 376, Not enough runs batting first. Wet weather. Batted well enough in the second dig to save the game. Bowling still not where it should have been.

4th Test: Headingley Australia win by an innings and 80 runs
England 102 and 263; Australia 445. Nice win, but how did they get to 263 in the second dig?

5th Test: The Oval England win by 197 runs
England 332 and 373/9d; Australia 160 and 348. Straightforward again. Not enough runs in the first dig, too big a target in the second. Twenty wickets would have helped.

Looking at things in that light, there’s no department of the game where there isn’t room for significant improvement.
Batting - two cases of ‘not enough in the first dig’;
Bowling - persistent failure to take twenty wickets and a tendency to leak runs;
Fielding - dropped catches and some strange decisions when it came to setting fields;
Captaincy and Selection Policy - had a bearing on most of the above.

So it’s fairly easy to see what went wrong.

The hard bit is deciding what to do about it, because that’s raises some questions about how some people are doing their jobs, and they won’t like that. For example, I notice that Mr Ponting is talking about the possibility of having another go in 2013, and presumehe means as captain of the side.

That’s a worrying scenario. I assume returning as captain, then means holding the reins throughout the intervening period, presumably in all forms of the game. Frankly, having lost The Ashes twice even assuming you win them back in 2011 it’s a bit much to expect to be given a third opportunity to hand the urn back to the Old Enemy.

In the wash-up after the series I avoided news reports because I didn’t want to see Messrs. Hilditch and Nielsen fronting the media, expressing their extreme disappointment but stressing the fact that the team is in a rebuilding phase and that they’ve taken some positives from the series.
Personally, I think the most positive thing that could come out of the whole thing would be the resignation of captain, coach, support staff and selection panel and a good hard look at the best ways to fill the various roles.

While I know that ain’t gonna happen, let’s explore what might happen if it did.

The captaincy is straightforward. Appoint a different captain/coach combination for each form of the game. That doesn’t mean that you couldn’t have the same skipper in the Test and ODI sides, but he’d be working with a different coach and a different line-up of players in each team.

You treat Twenty20 as a completely different kettle of fish.

Now I can imagine that people might say, Hang on a minute, that’s a bit extreme, but pause for a moment to consider some implications of splitting the coaching side of things.

A recent report has coach Tim Nielsen missing a chunk of the seven-match ODI series so he can fly home to spend some time with his growing family. If his responsibilities only went as far as the Test side, he’d be free until it’s time to start the lead-up to the series in India.

As well, a different captain/coach combination is going to mean a slightly different set of warm-up and practice drills which is going to be helpful if you’re looking to keep things fresh and interesting for the players involved. In fact, you’d almost expect there’d be a degree of informal competition between the different combinations when it comes to coming up with variations on familiar themes.

In any case, each combination should have a clearly defined mission - and failure to reach, say, the semi-finals of a World Cup would be a sackable offence.

Along the way to those goals, you need to be picking the right sides, and there are a couple of issues there.

For a start, there’s a definite point in a player’s career when he turns from up and coming prospect to vital cog in the side and once that transformation takes place it seems he’s more or less guaranteed a place in any given side unless injured, retired or persuaded to take a short break.

It seems persuading some members of the side that they need to take a break requires the use of a substantial amount of blasting powder and a couple of teams of wild horses.

And speaking of horses, at the same time as we mouth a few platitudes about horses for courses we end up selecting the same basic team anyway.

Face it, there are a limited number of series that matter. In the limited overs versions of the game there are the two World Cups first and daylight second. In test cricket the away series that matter are South Africa, India and England.

Without anybody noticing Sri Lanka slipped through to the #2 spot in the Test rankings. It may be a temporary aberration, but you know South Africa and India are always going to be very competitive both at home and when they tour here. England slips in because we’re probably going to have to play Pakistan there. Sorting out your side to play in English conditions kills two birds with one stone.

So, you want your strongest possible side for the conditions when you tour South Africa and India, and if you can get a combination that works in England, that’ll help knock over an inconsistent but always dangerous Pakistan, and take care of defending the Ashes as well.

When you look at the conditions that apply, you’re not likely to be selecting the exact same touring party for tours of India and South Africa, and the starting eleven is likely to vary with the different conditions that will probably apply.

If you looked at a variation on the side from the last Ashes test to play in South Africa you’d probably go in unchanged. For India you would drop at least one of the quicks to play a specialist spinner. In fact you could drop two and warn Shane Watson to expect to be doing a fair bit of bowling...

A side that works well in Indian conditions would more than likely be suited to Sri Lankan conditions as well.

The question of support staff raises interesting issues, and while it might cause the odd ego-driven hackle to rise, let’s start with the head honcho of the support staff, the coach.

While the role of the coach at junior levels is fairly clearly delineated, as you move up the age groups it becomes less and less a matter of skill development and more and more a matter of what theorists might describe as human resources management.

When Bob Simpson was installed in the position in the mid-eighties there were a number of issues that needed to be addressed if the Australian side was going to return to the spot on the ladder we’d like to see them occupying.

Simpson, from all accounts, wielded what many might see as an inordinate amount of power under a range of hats - technical advisor, selector, strategist, practice captain for a start - and it was obvious after a few years that giving one particular that much power wasn’t the way to go.

If a batsman felt that he was having some technical issues with his back-lift he mightn’t be comfortable talking to the technical advisor if the same guy was going to be making decisions about his place in the eleven.

The next occupant of the coach’s chair was a recently-retired player, Geoff ‘Swampy’ Marsh, and his stay was a continuation of the Simpson era without the same concentration of power. The fact that he was working with blokes he’d played with may well have been a two-edged sword - made it easy to fit him into the team’s hierarchy but meant that he was being called on to make decisions that might involve people he was close to.

Along the way from the eighties to the mid-nineties we found the rise of a new coaching fraternity, people who may not have played at the top level but had worked their way up through the accreditation-based hierarchy, and this one, from Hughesy’s point of view, raised a number of issues.

It’s obvious that there were a number of Australian players who had issues with John Buchanan’s approach to things, particularly after we’d hit the Number One spot and it was a matter of maintaining same.

I have a definite suspicion that a number of recent issues from the loss of the Ashes in 2005 through the Andrew Symonds debacle to the current situation come back to the interplay between coach and senior players.

I suspect that when Buchanan started making suggestions to senior players during the ‘05 series he was countered with something like, Look, John, we’re experienced Test cricketers. We know how to prepare. Trust us. We’ll be right when the time comes.

Buchanan’s response to the loss in ‘05 and the lead-up to the ‘07-’08 series prompted some fairly strong reactions, particularly from players who were hit with non-cricket-related injuries before the series started.

And in the light of the lead-up to the 2007-08 series, if you were to suggest that the Australian side should head off to some exotic location again for a spot of commando-style team bonding the response would more than likely be a resounding, No thanks. Get lost (or words to that effect).
You also get the impression that the current set-up is a little meeting-heavy and I find it hard to escape a suspicion that various senior players have, over the years politely excused themselves from attendance here and there.

Sorry, Tim (Nielsen, that is) Going to have to miss the meeting this morning. The missus needs me to take the kids to the doctor.

If there’s a situation like that arising from time to time a player mightn’t think it’s all that important to advise people if he happened to be thinking of indulging in a spot of fishing...

In any case, you’d hope that a team meeting involved something more than most of the boys getting together over a skinny latte or three for a bit of a chat about the way things are going at the moment.

The Hughesy-defined role of the coach, of course, involves splitting the ‘one coach one captain’ model.

The coach of the Test side should have the responsibility of raising the team’s standings from the current #4 ranking over the next four years, with a progress report after two.

The top of the pecking order is always likely to include India and South Africa. Add Australia in there and there’s room for one more in the top four, and that’s most likely to be either England or Sri Lanka. After the tour to India later this year (a difficult prospect at the best of times, and these aren’t exactly the best of times), there are home series against Pakistan and West Indies which should be extremely helpful when it comes to win/loss ratios.

If the next twelve months is going to see the continuation of the Nielsen/Ponting combination, fair enough, but the longer-term scenario could well be different.

As far as the One Day side is concerned, the target is the next World Cup, due in 2011. I think it’s safe to assume that at that point in time the One Day captain will be Michael Clarke. Neilsen-Clarke as the leadership team works for me, but I’d like to see a change of coach after 2011.

Then for the Twenty20 side in April next year, given the relatively short lead-up time, you’d probably want to go Neilsen-Clarke again, but I’d like to see a definite change of coach after that. Much as I dislike the man, I think that Shane Warne’s cricket brain makes him the ideal man for the job. Let’s see what a Warne-Clarke combination comes up with. It’s bound to be ‘different’...

In summary, as far as the coach is concerned, I’d like to see a review of the Test spot in mid-2011, a call for applicants for the One Day job after the 2011 World Cup and the same for the Twenty20 job in May/June next year.

These days, of course, apart from the actual coach there are a number of support staff around any high-profile sporting team, and the Australian cricket side is no exception. Apart from the regulation physiotherapist, there are always going to be a number of consultants hired to address particular areas of concern.

One hopes that these guys’ contracts are subject to some sort of performance assessment. You can have a consultant who’s a wonderful bloke who gets on well with everybody, but charming personality isn’t worth the proverbial two knobs if the guys he’s working with aren’t performing.

Alternatively, you can have someone with an absolute wealth of knowledge and experience to share but a personality that leaves most of the people around him to place him in the same category as hessian underwear - impossible to wear.

Now, of course, there’s going to be an attitude of what goes on in the dressing room or on the training paddock stays there, and fair enough, but one of the issues raised by the recent series is a repeated failure to take twenty wickets, which raises an interesting question.

One of the major factors in the outcome of the 2005 series was bowling coach Troy Cooley, who’s now working for us rather than against us. He doesn’t, however, seem to be achieving the same success with our blokes...

There are all sorts of explanations for that inconvenient fact, and not all of them lead directly to Mr Cooley’s door. Take, for example, the question of the much-touted bowling plans. We know very well that there are lots of things that are talked about and plans are definitely made. So, if you have a bowling attack that can’t take twenty wickets you can’t help thinking that there’s a problem - maybe with the plans themselves, or maybe with their execution.

It may even be that the right plans are put in place, but something like luck - weather, the toss, a flurry of dropped catches, or incompetent umpiring would be likely factors - happened to get in the way. Fair enough. If that happened there’s nothing you can do about the plan. If, however, you’ve bowled to the plan and failed to take the twenty it could well be a case of the wrong plan, and if you’ve worked up a plan you’d expect the bowlers to follow it.

When you’re looking at those things, I think that why didn’t we have a 100% success rate? yardstick is the way to go, but I wouldn’t be holding my breath, because it might start upsetting some fairly comfortable apple-carts.

Which brings us to the players.

I think it’s fairly certain there’s a comfort zone surrounding both the senior players in the side and up and coming players who’ve been anointed on the way up. Fair enough, but they have to perform, and if they’re not performing you may have to either change the environment or change the people who inhabit it.

Take the matter of meetings. It’s fairly obvious that there are people who love them, and, equally there are others who can’t stand them. When it comes to filling in a daily or weekly itinerary strategic planning meeting is a pretty handy space filler, but there is definitely a habit for people to call meetings merely for the excuse to have a meeting.

Anybody who’s spent a couple of years in a school environment knows exactly what I mean.

One hopes that when a meeting is called you don’t find senior members of the team excusing themselves on the grounds that you know what I think about this, and the missus wants to...

One issue that left me baffled was the wives and girlfriends story from the 2005 series. Now I realise there’s uncertainty about whether there was a major spat between the partners of a couple of senior players. Adam Gilchrist apparently reckons there was. The captain reckons there wasn’t.

Fair enough, but without going into names and personalities it may well be that you can’t go on tour and have both these girls in the entourage. It may well be the case that you can’t go on tour and have both these players in the party, and if those sorts of issues are bubbling away under the surface, there are handy pressure-release devices associated with the three more or less separate sides scenarios.

If there are issues between particular players in the dressing room, you can possibly minimise them by ensuring that they’re not sharing the same dressing room all that often.

If you’re talking about tiffs between the girls, two points.

First, if there are two partners who don’t see eye to eye you can avoid the problem by not picking one of the players. End of problem.

Second, unless I’ve got something drastically wrong, the reasons families go on tour is the inordinate amount of time that the team spends away from home. If you’re talking three more or less separate teams, the players are going to get more ‘R&R’ time at home, lessening the need for them to cart the family along for most of the tour.

Those things bring us to the other aspect of team selection that I’ve avoided so far - the selection process itself.

Under Hughesy’s separate captain-coach combinations, you’d call for nominations for the three coaching jobs, have the applicants submit an overview of the way they see things unfolding, and work out the best combination of captain and coach from there.

In that scenario you’d have a fairly clear selection strategy in place for each of the three sides, and you’d be using the selection panel to oversee things like talent identification, player development and squad rotation.

Touring parties playing Tests in Bangla Desh, New Zealand, Zimbabwe and the West Indies would contain a mix of regular Test players and emerging players who are being monitored with a view to future tours to India/Sri Lanka (Bangla Desh) and England (New Zealand) and South Africa (Zimbabwe).

Home series against those sides would work more or less the same way, with some regular players rested to give the selection panel a chance to see whether emerging talent is likely to handle the move up to the next level.

While that might look like downplaying your opponents, you always expect a New Zealand side to come at you aiming for a major upset and that all those sides are going to be exploiting underdog status to knock over Australia.

More particularly, if you’re looking at a top-order batsman, you’d want to see how he shapes up against a West Indies pace attack. While they’re nowhere near the sort of combination the Windies rolled out from the late seventies into the nineties, if a bat can’t handle them you’d suspect that he’d have problems dealing with the South Africans.

And if you’re looking at bowlers, you’d be checking their ability to bowl to a plan and adjust where necessary before you asked them to turn out and deal with Tendulkar, Smith, Strauss or Sangakarra.

In much the same manner, if you’re looking to take a spinner or two to India or Sri Lanka you’d want to try them in Bangla Desh or at home against any of those sides.

Teams playing ODIs and Twenty20 games would work on the same basis, particularly when you’re looking at different tactics on the way towards the World Cup in each format.

Over the years it has been standard practice to have a selector on duty on all those tours, and of course that would continue. The big question concerns what they’re doing while they’re there.

Some people are going to suggest that it isn’t appropriate to have the selector on duty combining the job with a role in the media or as a tour guide, but, really, what are you expecting the selector in question to do?

I was struck by that question when I went to Cairns in July 2006 to watch Australia A take on India A, two sides that contained a number of players who went on to some prominence and quite a few who didn’t. Merv Hughes was on duty there, and almost every time I sighted the Big Fella he was engaged in conversation with various people, often with members of the Australia A squad, almost invariably telling them his latest joke.

Fair enough, each time was during a lunch break, and I think he spent most of the time watching the game from the function room at the top of the grandstand.

I’d suggest the last place you’d want the selector on duty to sit down watching the game would be the team dressing room. Of course he’d be expected to call in at odd intervals for various reasons, such as having a quiet word to reassure some batsman who’s just copped a rough decision that it isn’t the end of the world, but you wouldn’t want the panel getting too close to individuals in teams they’re selecting.

Of course, given Big Merv’s reputation for dressing room shenanigans when he was playing you’d probably be wary of having him in there at all.

No, if the selector on duty has another hat that doesn’t get in the way while he watches the game, fine. Spend some time with your tour group, do a bit of commentary (particularly prior to the start of play or the resumption after a break), engage in a spot of corporate box promotion for the Australian dairy, wine or steel industries, no problem.

As long as they’re watching the game and maintaining a degree of selectorial decorum...

It has taken a number of morning walks to mull over the foregoing observations on the way to getting to this point. At a bit over four thousand words it’s time to wrap it up, but one thing before I go.

As far as I’m concerned Australia’s natural place in the pecking order of world cricket is firmly in the #1 slot. I want to see an Australian side playing at close to 100% capacity taking on whoever wants to knock them off the perch.

In 2005 we saw what was supposedly one of the all-time great Ashes series. Seriously, an Australian side playing at somewhere like 80% lined up against an English side that were playing at around 110.

And just lost.

This time we were down around 75 and the opponents ranged through the eighties, up and down as the series ebbed and flowed. In the process we dropped down to #4 in the Test rankings.

I reckon there’s a big sign sitting on the top rung of the ladder bearing much the same message as the Hamilton Island advertising hoarding beside the highway between Bowen and Proserpine. What does it say?

You are not here. Why?