Knuckles
Ted Thorn (20)
Yes some of our guys don't have great records in England, but until 2010/11 most of the English had positively shithouse records in Australia. Classy players in form will perform under any conditions.
Agree, but my biggest concern is that whilst Ponting in particular and Hussey in Sydney were 2 of the 3 mainstays in the batting line up v India, they have ordinary records in England. And we know they have been there more than once. I think it would be (and should be) very hard to drop Ponting now, but keeping someone like Hussey in the team just coz he's a good bloke will inevitably hurt us. The issue is that these days, because of the money in the game, players no longer retire in this country. They wait around for too long before the selectors drop them and then write a book about how the selectors showed a lack of loyalty for the years of sacrifice etc.
Tough decision have to be made. Whilst its always great to win series, the pinnacle of Australian Cricket is always to win the Ashes. We play a lot of Test cricket between now and the next Ashes series with matches against West Indies, Sri Lanka and South Africa. Get an old bloke out and give a promising youngster a go...and say to him, righto champ, we have 4 series for you to get used to test cricket, if you wanna go to england, stand up. We'll give you 2 full test series of opportunity, its up to you if you'll be in the last 2!