England's Team Selection, Management and Leadership leads to regaining Ashes

In my previous column, I had mentioned that the teams that would win Brisbane would go on and win the Ashes series. It is no surprise that England with a new assertive outlook, have come on top to regain the Ashes in Australia’s den.

When one would go back to analyse England’s performance, lot of it should be owed to Strauss and Flower, for making their team members to believe in themselves. When you have a skipper who backs you, the quality of output is shown clearly and that has what is happening in England today and the same can be said of India about couple of years back. Only a good team who have confidence in themselves can bounce back into the test match after their loss in the previous test matches – England have done that in style, and later followed by India in South Africa. Cook is in tremendous form and so is Strauss, Peterson, Bell and Trott. Though Collingwood has been unimpressive in this series, it does not bother to Strauss, even though he could be regarded as a passenger to many. The same can be said of bowlers too!! When a new bowler for England in Tremlett takes over from Stuart Board, he was among the wickets straight away in the 2nd test match as is the case with Bresnan.

When one looks at dismal performance of Aussies, it rightly points to Ponting’s attitude and his inability to make the team perform at the highest level, apart from convincing the team selectors for team selection. When 4 players out of 11 are non performance in Hughes, Ponting, Clarke and Smith, one cannot convert this into a winning unit. The team selection has to be precise in that sense. The slide began, when North was selected for the 2nd test match ahead of Khawaja and instead having Smith replacing him. Thus you had a replacement for North who cannot bat nor bowl. When Nathan Hauritz have provided with his bowling and batting capability time and again in this domestic season, why was he sidelined and preferred to Steve Smith or for that matter an unknown commodity in Beer. So, every match you have to shoulder more responsibility on Watson or Hussey in the batting department and Smith was like a passenger in this Aussies Team.

As told to you in my previous article, unless and until the selection process changes, this team will have to pacify itself for the sole victory at Perth. My suggested Aussies XI would be as follows: Shane Watson, Katich, Khawaja, Ponting, Clarke, Hussey, Haddin, Hauritz, Johnson, Siddle and Hilfenhaus.