Selection, by George

GH on Australia's First Test squad

Selectors were once cricket’s faceless men - no longer.  Their falling in with the modern vogues for accountability and transparency is generally a positive development, but it also allows for a contestation of their reasoning as well as their actual choices.

For the First Test at Perth Stadium, we learned yesterday, Australia will be pressing twenty-five-year-old Nathan McSweeney into service as opener.  After two months of correspondence between the game’s various tribunes, we had genial George Bailey on hand at the MCG to explain the rationale, and sensibly spoken McSweeney himself to affirm it.