By Gary Watton
July 21 2015

England's selectors are unique among sports team selectors. Whereas the football and rugby union selectors (among others) will choose according to form, the cricket selectors never use form as a criteria for selection. They always choose on the basis that a batsman made runs in the past. However, the clue is in the words 'in the past'.

England's defeat by over four hundred runs was effectively an innings and four hundred runs, as Australia only lost about ten wickets in the match. This is definitely the cricketing equivalent of a four or five-nil home defeat suffered by the England football team. What are the chances that the England football manager would choose the same eleven players again (even if the red tops allowed him to!)?

It's less brave and less hassle to do nothing than to make changes. The latter requires courage. Bairstow is in the form of his life and Ballance most definitely is not. However, the selectors' party trick is to choose someone for a winter tour based on their fine form that summer rather than to insert that in-form player into the summer's test cricket. They did that last year when Lyth was red-hot, ignoring him, and then picking him the following summer. As with Lyth, the dilly-dally selectors will choose Bairstow for a winter tour and ignore his current form. By the time that he gets into the test eleven, his purple patch may have passed. Sheer stupidity.

FOOTNOTE!

Fortunately, the selectors have proven me wrong by actually reinstating Jonny Bairstow on account of his current form. However, his selection remains the exception, rather than the norm, in recent years.