Just when I thought I was going to have to start barracking for the Poms and sign up for the Barmy Army it seems like the Australian selectors have come to the rescue.

On the other hand I'm not holding my breath because there's no guarantee that the hard questions are finally going to be asked, so I haven't quite reached the point where I'm tearing up that enlistment/application form, but it definitely seems we're in for an interesting test match, and an intriguing couple of months.

Over the nest five days we'll see how close the revamped bowling attack can get to taking twenty wickets, and we'll have further indications about strengths and weaknesses of the respective batting orders.

What will be in that department will be, and it's a matter of wait and see.

More interesting, at least in the long run were the reports I sighted just before ominous rolls of thunder swept over Bowen earlyish on Friday morning, forcing me to sever connections to the internet. It seems, from at least one media report that what amounts to a civil war has broken out between at least some members of the national selection panel and the (question mark) brains trust that sits on top of the Australian team.

Apparently, had Ponting been given his 'druthers Mitchell Johnson would be taking the field in Adelaide later this morning. As it is, the out of sorts bowler apparently won't, however, be sent off to hurl down some thunderbolts for W.A. even though there's a one-dayer against the Bulls at the WACA later today and a return match and a Shield game in the week between the end of the Adelaide test and the start of the third test in Perth.

You might have thought those games would have provided a couple of opportunities for Mitch to just wang it down and possibly do a little work on his batting (as suggested in my previous effort).

As I type up the notes I scrawled earlier in the morning the news is that Ponting won the toss and will, predictably, bat.

No, rather than being sent off to work things out in something approaching the heat of battle with the Warriors Johnson will be remaining with the team in Adelaide so he can work out his complicated technical issues with bowling coach Troy Cooley, who has presumably been on board while those issues were emerging.

Strange. One would have thought that if the bowling coach was there those issues would have been nipped in the bud as they emerged or, failing that, headed off at the pass before they'd had the chance to go too far.

This raises some interesting questions about the way the support structures surrounding the Australian team are set up. Apart from the actual team coach (Tim Neilsen) we apparently have specialist coaches to cover the batting (Justin Langer), bowling (Troy Cooley) and fielding (Mike Young, though he's off for a three week consultancy with India for the next three weeks or so).

One would have thought that the four job descriptions associated with those positions would include the supervision of practice drills, the monitoring of in-game performances and the identification and analysis of technical issues. One would also have expected that Neilsen and Cooley would have some input into the much vaunted bowling plans.

Now, for a while it has definitely been a case of an Australian bowling attack that isn't consistently operating at maximum potency, and one recalls the questions about who was setting the fields when Nathan Hauritz was bowling on the recent tour to India.

As a result I've often wondered who sets these plans, how many possible plans have been identified and who makes the assessment of the plans' effectiveness.

An uninformed observer might, for instance, be thinking that you'd have a plan in place for each of the English openers while the ball is new, and a contingency plan should either or both of them survive the new ball.

That idea isn't exactly rocket science.

You'd also expect something similar for each player going down the order with a diminution in detail in the contingency plans as you approach #11.

There's every chance that the early dismissal of Strauss in the first dig at the Gabba was the result of a plan to try and get him to cut early in the innings and cramp him for room with one that jags into him, thereby inducing a catch behind the wicket or perhaps a bottom edge into the stumps.

It's difficult to avoid the suspicion that the players in the Australian side are extremely selective about who they'll accept advice from (understandable, you'd expect that the volume of incoming data of an advisory nature would require filtering) and how much of that advice gets taken on board.

Looking back, I'm reminded of a story from Eric Adams, who used to be the Queensland Cricket development officer in these parts back in the mid-nineties when Queensland first won the longtime elusive Sheffield Shield. Eric recounted that in the days before the final all of the Development Officers from around the state were brought into Brisbane and that they'd been roped in to conduct the final practice session the day before the game started.

That makes sense when you think about it. Do something different, make it a lightish workout. You'd think it would be a logical tapering to wind up the pre-match preparation.

Significantly, the Queensland coach at the time was John Buchanan, and it seems quite consistent with later practice when he was looking after the Australian team. The Bulls' players, on the other hand, according to Eric, were rather disdainful, and the only one of the blokes who put them through the Kanga cricket drills these guys do on their way around the primary school circuit who got any attention at all was Bennett King, who had some credibility after an A Grade rugby League career with Valleys in the Brisbane competition, and a NRL career that was cut short by injury.

I can't help suspecting that contributions from Buchanan, Neilsen and Cooley are regularly downplayed because they don't, regardless of any paper qualifications, have the international career credentials that would make their advice worth heeding.

In that regard, the increasing influence of newly-appointed national selector greg Chappell can only be seen as encouraging.

Maybe we also need to see someone like Alan Border or Steve Waugh catapulted into the frame with a licence to deliver blunt, language advisory heavy, assessments of performance and practices.