For example, including promising young players Usman Khawaja and Glen Maxwell and then making them 12th man defies any logic whatsoever .

They may as well have stayed home.

With the amount of young  Australian cricket talent around at the moment, the future looks very healthy for our international side, with the retirements of Ponting and Hussey only giving  some other younger players the opportunity to obtain a place in Australian Test cricket history – if they play them. 

The recent test series against South Africa and Sri Lanka has shown the two extremes of these test sides – South Africa still a powerful all-round outfit, and Sri Lanka struggling to compete competitively – resulting in a disastrous performance in Melbourne.

But it was South Africa that exposed  our major weak spot once again – our spin bowling department – compounded by the fact that part-time bowlers Michael Clarke and David  Warner were called upon to help, exposing once again that sometimes wickets and averages by the designated spin bowler do not reflect the performances that count.

This brings us to the next question – can  Australia afford the luxury of having any slow bowler in their side, incapable of having an influence, especially on wearing fourth and fifth day wickets?

In this day and age of international cricket it is a reality that the sides that have the greater amount of players with all-round ability have a much greater advantage over sides that still persist with traditional line-ups. 

Australia, which at the moment has an abundance of very talented fast bowlers to choose from, could do a lot worse than to encourage David Warner, who has shown himself as a player of such natural ability that he could adapt to anything.

With some help from Australia’s best ever spin bowler, Shane Warne, one never knows how much Warner could improve and give our international side a tremendous confidence boost and advantage, which will be required in future contests, culminating  in six months’ time with the battle for the Ashes against England.  

Young players are so adaptable these days – it makes sense to utilise their untapped talent, and I believe David Warner is a standout.

Ken Price,

Eaglehawk