Firstly, thanks to those members who participated in the selection process for the WAT England A XI. It was the first attempt at team selection via a forum. I'd like to hear people's views and suggestions about ways to improve the selection procedure next year. What worked this year and what didn't? Just to give an example of how difficult selecting a team can be I found an example on the rediff.com website: Rediff chooses its Indian team

Also read the reactions by forum members.

By comparison I think we did rather well but I think improvements can be made.

I think posting a list of qualifiers from each division was necessary as the County Championship is a mixture of local and foreign players. Some players are also in a qualifying period for England status.

The next important step is to whittle those players down to a provisional squad of 30 players. That is not easy since about 90 players qualify. Consequently, I came up with a suggested list of player types to ensure we had a cross-section of player types to pick a balanced team.

11 batsmen (1-5)
5 batting-allrounder(6)
3 wicketkeepers (7)
3 bowling-allrounder(8)
8 bowlers (9-11)

Should we alter this? Did it help the selection procedure?

I found this a particularly difficult phase because many players had similar form this year and some players didn't play every match. There is also the strength of each division to consider, as well - is Division 2 form equal to Div 1 form? Our final team contained 6 Div 2 players. Are they out of their depth in 'A' class? I'll be watching the Academy winter tour results to see if I can spot any bias in the performance of players from the respective divisions. I remember last year Pietersen (Div 2) looking a better player than Newman (Div 1) and Smith (Div 1). We'll see what happens this year.

After the provisional squads were submitted I asked members to help select the final XI by submitting their own XI. My thinking here was to encourage members who would take the process of selection seriously and be thoughtful about their selections. I thought this worked rather well. I found all the selectors took the exercise seriously and I think we produced a respectable final XI, as a result. I doubt a single individual could persuade me that they could pick a better balanced side. So the input of a group of selectors worked well, I thought.

Now, that we had a good basis to work from we entered into a discussion/negotiation phase which required some compromise and fierce defence of players we had strong convictions about. The lack of obvious depth in some areas made the final choices very difficult to sign-off. It is this whole area that needs to be looked at, I feel, as it was difficult to reach consensus, particularly when a strong individual view was met with an opposite majority view. If we resort to compromise in every situation we may as well just decide the whole thing by polls. There has to be allowance for submitting evidence of a player's worthiness in the decision-making process.

I'd like to reiterate what I said before: that we can't pick this side on guesses about improvement. The A-Team concept is about giving players who have proven themselves at County level a chance to impress at an intermediate level between County and Test level. That is the basis this team should be picked on. This must be kept in mind when choosing young players. It is easy to pick a star straight from the Academy or Under 19's on the basis that they are a Test player of the future but, as far as I'm concerned, if they don't shine and show some consistency at County level then they aren't likely to do any better stepping up to 'A' grade.

That one is easy: Pietersen played for one season in Division One in a very poor Notts side on dodgy Trent Bridge wickets. He scored lots of runs at an exceptional average. During the winter he toured with the Academy side to India as did Newman and Smith. Pietersen scored loads of runs, the other two failed miserably.

Well I think the whole selection process for the WAT England A XI was fun, I would not be to fussed about making what could be to many complicated changes.
The only problem I found, was that your post was at times superceded by events in omly minutes.

I disagree with some of what you say above, stats are fine if you dont know the player that well, or not at all, but one can't ignore instinct, if I was wrong Flintoff would not be thriving in the England team at the moment, I wonder how many would have put him in the WAT team 2 or3 tears ago.
Consistency at county level has to be considered to a large extent, but that is far from the only factor, loads of player with fantastic county records have failed once in the England team, Hick and Ramps are prime examples of this, while I don't think I Botham had that good stats with Somerset, I may have to be standing correcting on that one, but I think not.
Stat books to a large degree have been made a nonsense of since the onset of the 2 divisions of the county league, players from D1 are being compared with players from D2.
I think the role of an a team is to sort this out, along with the acadomy.

Just my views, but congradulations on a very good and entertaining thread, that was fun from the word go, frustrating at times, but that was part of the fun, trying to right what one though was wrong. GOOD STUFF.

Ern

OK.. I've been giving some thought to this off and on all day long.. and I think the key is to start with specialists: work out who are the best 6 eligible batsmen (irrespective of where in a team they might bat)... then work out who is the best gloveman (irrespective of batting)... and then work out who are the best 4 bowlers.

I think this stage could be done by a process of elimination in a series of polls in the County Forum: a kind of "weakest link" type thing that sorts out who is, by common consent, most deserving AS A SPECIALIST.

I very much think that this has to be done first.. and BEFORE considerations of the balance of the side.

Phase 2 should then be about tinkering with the BALANCE of the side: sorting out which players might need to be replaced to add greater depth to the batting, greater depth to the bowling or a stronger fielding side. I'd run a poll to see which 2-3 players in the "specialist" side are generally recognised as the weakest links.. and take it from there.

You might find that the top 6 batsmen are all middle-order players.. and the concerns are with finding lesser batsmen who appeal more as openers. You might find that the middle order is seen as too aggressive and concerns are raised about the no 5 or 6 bat. You might find that te worry is about the lower-middle order.. with many calling for a bowling all-rounder.. or you might find the attack lacks pace, or dependability, or variety, and there's call for either a different TYPE of bowler.. or for a batting all-rounder.

With that information in place.. I'd ask people to nominate their preferred permutation (to be labelled teams a, b, c, d and so on) and then just have a weakest link type poll to see which nominated team can carry the day.

Hi Rachael, Thanks for giving it some thought. I can see that it is possible to arrive at a balanced team with your system. How long that process would take and how smooth the negotiations would be remains to be seen but it's worth a try as I'm confident that should we survive the process we'll arrive at a good, balanced side. If anyone has additional thoughts or contrary views the topic is still open for discussion.

I know you have given this a lot of thought, but you can't IMO select players by poll, foe a start it is open to tactical abuse, look at your anology with the "Weakest Link" how tactical can you get?.

Why not a simple discussion followed by a simple headcount of posts, after a deadline for nominations, nearly the same thing, but out in the open.

Ern

The main problem with our poll is that you can see the current results before you vote which could influence voting. I prefer a system in which you have to vote first before you see the results. Whatever system we adopt it has to be flexible enough to give those who don't "live" on this forum a chance to participate in the negotiations.

Well I voted for Keedy because I thing we need spin bowlers who can turn the ball away from the bat, as we have no leggie's, so nothing would have deflected me from that.
However I can see your point, but the effect is minimal I think, and it depends on what you mean by influencing the voter, if one was not sure, and he saw a comment that he liked, and he voted because of that, I can't see what is wrong with that, and most posters have their own views.
This is more delicate how to be fair to everyone, but I think a generous deadline is the best answer, unlike Rachael I would say voting for a team at any stage is just not an option, we are trying I think to be as near to the real thing as possible, Being flexible how would that work, say we had all made our minds up, and then comes a latecomer, so to be fair we give him/her a chance, then it could all go up in the air again.

that is why I said a generous deadline, with an anouncment from your good self saying when negociations where going to start on picking a team, and setting two deadlines, one for objections becuase they could not meet that deadline, and after that a deadline which means no more contributers.

just a thought.

ern

I'm not too bothered which course you choose to take in the future. I didnt mind the way we did it this time except for having a lot of reading to do if I had missed a session. I think we still need to maintain the reviews of the side at regular intervals so we can make changes that may become necessary. I actually found the squad of 30 we had to pick was too big so I felt it was being filled up with dead wood, not a major issue but possibly something to consider. Maybe we could pick an initial squad of 20 or less before the polls start as most of the players arent in contention anyway. Possibly the boundaries set out for player types may need altering as for the most part we did not adhere to them (although the final side did in the end) but still it was a guide which could be useful. I, like Rachael am a believer in picking specialists first and foremost then adjusting the side where necessary after that, as I outlined on the other thread, and would be happy to see the top 6 bowlers, 8 batsmen, keeper and 3 all rounders picked by polls then start with a team of all specialists. Another point I raised on the other thread was the use of the chat room if we wanted to quickly discuss options after the players have been discussed on the thread, positive / negative points etc as I feel that this would be a far quicker way of making decisions, voting and resolving disputes than on the thread itself. I dont see this as a replacement for the presentation of arguments for/against players as we all made in this selection but I do think it would be a much faster and easier way to get to a compromise. If necessary the key points could be posted onto the thread.
These were all the things I thought could have been changed, but I thought it was a very enjoyable excercise and hopefully a wothwhile result.

I think you start with a keeper and then build !

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