Is Australian Selection Scrutiny Irking Players Mental Welfare?

Cricket is a great level playing field. It makes sure that you are revered all throughout the world when you come up with something absolutely out of your skins, but at the same time it would never let you ride on those laurels for long. It confers you with accolades from highest echelons, but is never shy of prising out the best from you every-day. It needs you to be tenacious, focused but more than any of those, hungry.

But these harrows could seriously stymie the player’s progress in terms of mental fitness and toughness. True that Cricket can quickly turn out to be a harsh slap of reality, for a few, entering the international arena, and only the best 11 can be cut out to represent their nation, but sometimes being rebuffed without committing too much of a mistake can take its toll on player’s mental fitness. And the Australian selection committee has always attracted flak as far as their policy of dropping players are concerned.

Nobody can raise whimpers about how difficult a job it is, to watch over players throughout the country and chalk out the best set of players, who fit to the needs of the national side and are ready to take the leap to the highest level. But it is equally important to have empathy with a youngster, who has gone through the harrows of the stern Australian Domestic circuit, done everything that has been asked from him and clambered his way to the top, only to find that he is being judged based on couple of innings, that doesn’t reflect the copious amount of potential he has, which actually earned him that call for the national side, and has been made to bore the brunt because the team feels that things needs to be reshuffled, without any actual reason for sacking.

Nick Maddinson is the latest name that has been added to Cricket Australia’s rejection list. He has been left out of the India tour and the word is that Maddinson would miss his Sheffield Game against Queensland due to personal reasons. He is not the first one to be on the list. Likes of Shane Warne, Michael Clarke, Nathan Hauritz, Chris Rogers, and Jason Krejza are few of the conspicuous names on the list of players who have faced the Australian Selection dystopia. Shaun Tait, took an indefinite break from cricket after being dropped from the national side. Brad Hogg too retired himself early from international cricket only to find redemption in the shortest format of the game again.

The problem with such direct denial is that seldom, you would find players who could simply nod their head to the decision and get back to training again. More often than not you clobber the mental mind-set of the players where he starts to question his abilities, and wonders whether he is actually fit for baggy green again. And it’s a loss for Australian Cricket, as only a little psychological assistance and backing up could give them players with immense potential and indomitable mental toughness. It is one side that Australian Cricket seriously needs to moot over and take actions, in order to churn and prise out the best for their national squad, in order to fuel their passionate pursuit of greatness and world dominance again.