Australia's Peter Siddle, right, celebrates after dismissing Sachin Tendulker, left, of India during the fourth day of their first test cricket match at the Melbourne Cricket
Resting Peter Siddle for the coming Adelaide Test would see common sense in Australia fall to its lowest level yet (even falling below the Doherty-Hauritz-Beer bunfight of last season), as picking the best eleven is replaced by a method of rotation for rotation’s sake.
Far from improving the injury troubles of young bowlers in Australia, a rotation policy would unnecessarily weaken the side and remove continuity, all the while reducing the younger bowlers’ conditioning for the unique rigours of Test cricket.
As far as Siddle goes, he is Australia’s strongest, most physically fit bowler. He’s allegedly the ‘leader of the attack’.
This is a guy who is renowned for his effort and fitness. He runs in hard at 11 am, and he positively charges in at five minutes to six.
He is certainly not a member of the apparently brittle group of young bowlers, jousting for places in the team. Resting him for this match would not only be an utter waste of time, but it would also interrupt his consistent season, and leave Australia with an eleven which is not its best.
Regardless of the current performance of the Indian side, picking a weakened side is not in the spirit or tradition of Australian Test cricket.
Beyond this, the logic behind rotation is fundamentally flawed.
It’s not hard to see why the young bowlers are getting injured. They’re in the gym when they should be bowling. Shane Watson was the first of these, and it ought not surprise anyone that when he started to go a little easy on the dumbbells, his injury trot came to an abrupt end.
The bowlers aren’t in the nets as often as they should be. They are not conditioning their bodies to bowl 20 overs in a day and then back up the next day and do it again, because they never bowl anywhere near 20 overs outside of a first class match situation.
Then all of a sudden, they’re picked for Australia or, god forbid, play in the Sheffield Shield, and suddenly they’re all coming up with stress-related back and foot injuries. It makes sense doesn’t it?
Pat Cummins was selected for Australia after playing a princely three first class games. While his debut indicated that his bowling is ready, the fact his debut has not been added to, suggests his body is not.
Given that prior to his national call-up, he was playing predominantly limited overs cricket. There, he would bowl between four and ten overs and never bowl two days in a row, the selectors should have ensured he was bowling enough in the nets that he was conditioned for Tests.
Alas, rather than being proactive in this way, they instead just picked him, threw him into a Test match and wondered why he developed a long-term injury.
I’m not a doctor or a physiotherapist, but it seems fairly obvious to me what’s going on.
We keep hearing the excuse that the injuries are happening because of too much cricket. I believe the opposite is true, that injuries are happening because of not enough of the longer forms of cricket.
Can you imagine training for an Olympic marathon by running four 100m sprints every three days?
I wonder how far you’d get on race day.
Rotation is not the solution, especially when the player being rotated out is not part of the problem. Rather than looking for this sort of quick answer, Australia should be looking at making sure that bowlers have conditioned themselves properly before they’re picked.
If they fail to do that, we will see an Australian side which perpetually struggles for rhythm, and a group of talented fast bowlers wasted because they crumble when they go past their usual Twenty20 allotment.
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