Posted by Australia have dropped George Bailey from their Test squad. It was always likely that the side would be eviscerated by the selectors after only just about managing to saunter to five massive wins over England. They’re basically in turmoil.
The replacement is none other than perennial Test yo-yo, Shaun Marsh, of whom Australia’s national selector, John Inverarity, said:
“We all know that when Shaun plays at his best, he’s a very good player.”
This is a pretty good synopsis of Marsh’s career. He does look good when he’s at his best. Whether you think he’s good or not largely depends on whether you consider ‘his best’ to be the norm or an occasional aberrative state. Plenty of Australians hope that a prolonged spell of ‘his best’ is just around the corner. They’ve been hoping for about a decade now, but it must be getting closer.
Marsh has forced his way back into the side through sheer weight of runs. Since he was dropped from the Test team a year ago, he’s made 675 first-class runs at 25.
One-day form may also have played a part in his recall. Short format runs are increasingly being seen as a strong indication of long format ability following the successful promotion of George Bailey to the Test team.
who knows what the selectors/administrators (of any side) are thinking – at any time. they higher up people are in management, the more they start to behave like politicians: driven by undisclosed personal agenda and (probably) liable to change their minds suddenly if someone slips them a large unmarked envelope.
you sum all this nonsense up pretty nicely, as always. on the other hand, don’t think we haven’t noticed your one-man crusade to get the word “aberrative” slipped into the dictionary. it ain’t gonna happen 😉
Frank Keating used it in 1999.
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/1999/apr/22/cricket
It also appeared in a medical study title we can’t even begin to understand.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11906795
KC, taking us back to the aberrative heyday of 1949.
pffeh… precedent schmecedent 😉
ok, so you have frank keating on your side (though i’m not quite sure what he was thinking). but as you say, that was back in 1999 and his aberrant use of the word didn’t get it into any dictionaries as far as i am aware…
(the other one doesn’t count: it was authored entirely by people whose first language is japanese and besides, medical jargon is a law unto itself.)
but in any case my point was that you seem hell-bent on using it as often as you can. ARE you trying to slip it into the next OED? go on, you can tell us.
No, we’ve no love for the word at all. It’s a weird tic and we don’t know where we picked it up or why we’re using it. It’s not a conscious thing, we assure you.
Poor Phil Hughes. Arguably, two out of the four occasions he’s been dropped have been undeserved.
Meanwhile, three boards are attempting a coup on the game of cricket.
Yeah yeah yeah, we’re on it. We’ve done not one, but TWO sizeable articles on the subject. We’ll publish the one earmarked for this site tomorrow, which means that we’re going to have to write a second post for today in order to cover the Pakistan win. By Wednesday, we’ll have run out of things to say and will write something rubbish because we feel obliged and then everyone will unsubscribe from the site because it’s a bit hit and miss and WHY WON’T THE NEWS SPACE ITSELF OUT BETTER AND ALSO RESTRICT ITSELF TO OCCURRING ONLY ON WEEKDAYS?
Shaun Marsh = Rohit Sharma?
So Bailey has been Shauned. Or Sharmaed.
Looks like Angelo Mathews was thinking of the below:
Differential screening-selected gene aberrative in neuroblastoma protein modulates inflammatory pain in the spinal dorsal horn.
hence the aberrant captaincy
England’s mighty players have seen off several Aussie captains this winter, in the form of George Bailey and the “rested” Michael Clarke.
Massive wins over England? Where have you been lad? England have flippin’ murdered ’em.