In recent posts I have extolled the virtues of Nathan Hauritz and asserted confidently that Kenin Pietersen is unlikely to face a slow left armer in the series, so it should have come as no surprise to anyone to see Xavier Doherty included in the Australian squad for the first test.
It’s an interesting selection: Doherty is twenty-eight on Monday and has no first class pedigree to speak of. Indeed, it is startling that the two spinners in Australia’s squad have fewer first class wickets between them than Monty Panesar has test wickets. It’s sobering to ponder what the media reaction would have been both here and in Australia would have been if England had picked playes with such meagre first class records, but, of course there is comparitively recent precedent. In 1987 Australia picked Peter Taylor (or Peter Who? as the papers called him) for the Sydney test after just six first class matches and he was Man of the Match in an Australian win. Precedent lovers will note, however, that England won the Ashes.
There is a perception that Doherty has been selected specifically to combat Kevin Pietersen. If that is true then it is a selection that smacks slightly of panic – picking a spinner on the basis that one opposition batsman may find him hard to play isn’t necessarily a path that you go down if you have complete confidence in your bowling attack. Still, as has been amply proven already, I’ve been wrong before.
The alternative, of course, is that Andrew Hilditch and the selectors are playing some sort of alphabet based game and simply wanted to be the first Australian selectors to pick a player whose christian name begins with x.
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