With all the trouble the English team is having with selecting their team,is it time they scrap the traditional way & adopt the Australian model?

I cannot remember what other touring teams have done so I will use Australia & England as my examples.

The England team selectors in Australia are the captain(Flintoff) & the coach(Fletcher) with the opinions of senior players(Strauss,Hoggard & so forth) holding weight also.

This is not a good arrangement because it effects team harmony & adds another burden they do not need.
The captain & coach have their favourites & friends so of course they do not want to drop a mate.
If you were struggling would you like to talk about your problems/concerns with the people who are payed to help you but can also drop you?

When Australia is touring none of our respective players/staff have a decision to make.
Their opinions are noted but can/will be ignored.
The team is chosen by our selectors alone.
It does not matter if we are playing in Melbourne or Qatar.
They decide.

This process was started in response to Mark Taylors decline in Sth Africa.
We had 3 selectors on that tour & they were the captain(Mark Taylor),the vice-captain(Ian Heally)& the coach(Geoff Marsh).
As it was not right for these three(two really if you want to be honest) to decide the fate of an Australian captain they changed the rules so the chairman of selectors had the deciding vote by the telephone.

From then on a selector was sent on every tour & eventually the captain,vice & coach lost their votes in team selection.

That last decision was put in after the 2001 Ashes tour when the captain(now Steve Waugh)& the coach(now Buchanan)dropped M.Slater.
That caused alot of turmoil for Slater & the team.

An earlier reason why the rule changed was on the 1999 tour of the West Indies when Shane Warne was just back from an injury.
This was also the first game that Steve Waugh took over the captaincy.
Stuart MacGill had established himself in the the team while Warne had been injured.(His shoulder if I remember correctly.)
Warne was still rusty & as the Windies had quality left-handed batsmen(Lara & Adams)it was a risk playing 2 leggies.
They both played & Lara took a liking to both of them.(especially Warne)
As MacGill was the most effective(8 at 25.88 vs 2 at 109.00)Warne should have been dropped for the third test but wasn't & we lost.
In a 4 test series we were down 2-1 after 3 before they dropped Warne for the 4th test for Colin Miller.
(That sounds abit unbelievable looking back from here but we won the last test & Miller did well.2-39,1-27,43/38 & 1/3.)

I know all teams cannot afford to do this but the English can afford the additional costs involved & just imagine how much fuss & bother would be removed.
Freddy could concentrate on his game & the captaincy.
Fletcher could help players who needed it & as a bonus also have more time to think up stupid things to say.
Players having trouble would benefit the most however.

Who knows,they might even win a series in Australia too.

__________________
" You don't want the truth,you can't handle the truth."

Rod Marsh keep the reasoning on coaches not being selectors pretty simple: he reckons the coach needs to be on the side of the players... because the players need to be able to be completely open with him about niggles, concerns about technique, external factors that are a concern and so on. He suggests that this relationship is compromised if the player feels being straight with the coach might result in deselection!

Makes sense.

ON the other hand... I don't see the point in appointing a coach unless you're planning to let him do things their own way... and likewise with the captain: appointing a coach who puts temperament before technique and then selecting players like Lathwell, Hick, Ramps, Lewis, Tufnell, Caddick and Harmison would be about as sensible as appointing a coach who believes in getting the best out of great talents and then lumbering them with the likes of Stewart, Hussain, Collingwood, Cork and Croft.

The Gooch-Gower relationship embodied this distinction to me: you could run a team Gooch's way.. or Gower's way... and either might be successful... but you MUST decide on one or the other: giving Gooch a team of Gowers or vice-versa is NEVER going to work!

Graveny is in Aus the selectors are paid so they should always pick the team. Freddie as good as he is seems to be blinkered to his mates, No way should Monty and Read be dropped after last summer after a good series against a very talented Pakistan side, the selectors choose them then and they sjould have made the call now