Chopping, changing selection policy reason for poor Oz team performance: Waugh

SYDNEY - Everyone agrees the Australian Test team is broken but even the most learned can’t agree on how to fix it.

Former captain Steve Waugh believes the team’s slide had been influenced by an overly volatile selection policy.

“I don’t know what the selectors are going to do, because they have chopped and changed I think probably too much in the last 12 months. You just look at the bowling, they’ve got through so many bowlers, [such as] Clint Mckay, Peter George, then we’ve got [Ben] Hilfenhaus and [Mitchell] Johnson,” the Sydney Morning Herald quoted him, as saying.

e also felt that dropping opener Phillip Hughes’ after two Tests into last year’s Ashes was a short- sighted decision.

“I was totally against him being dropped at the time. I think it was a shortsighted decision and I think it’s proven so if he gets picked right now,” he said.

There was also a view that Nathan Hauritz had bolstered his Test recall chances by scoring a maiden first class century and taking five wickets in a previous Sheffield Shield match.

Former leg-spinner Shane Warne floated the name of Western Australian left-arm spinner Michael Beer as a horses for courses alternative in Perth.

Warne also intimated, in the Telegraph, that should Australia lose the Ashes, chopping and changing must occur.

“Then they can give three or four youngsters a go, with four or five experienced players, and try to rectify things,” he said.

The root of the problem, as hinted at by Cricket Australia operations chief Michael Brown yesterday, may be that the players next in line for Australia are not as ready as they have been in the past.

“We’re constantly told we’ve got the strongest domestic competition in the world, that’s being tested at the moment,” he told AAP. (ANI)