Top 5 bizarre choices by Australian selectors in recent times
The Australian selectors have made a habit of springing surprises each time they sit down to pick a team. Sometimes it is a glaring omission that makes fans wonder if they just forgot about the player. At other times, they seem adamant on rewarding anyone with a ball or bat with the Baggy Green.
Whatever be the case, the Australian selectors headed by their interim chairman, Trevor Johns, have made bizarre choices in recent times and it is worth noting that very few of them have gone down well with the Aussie fans.
One might recall that they chose to rest their premier pacemen, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood, for a high profile ODI series against the South Africans in their homeland, only for Australia to embarrassingly lose 5-0.
This is one among the many weird decisions that the selectors have made in recent times. Take a glance at a few others.
#5 Omitting John Hastings from the ODI team
When Australian selectors sat down to pick a 14 man squad for the Chappell-Hadlee Trophy in Australia against New Zealand few months back, they decided to omit fast bowler, John Hastings. What they missed or chose to ignore is that Hastings was the leading wicket taker in ODIs in 2016 until that point.
He had led the bowling attack in the ODI series against South Africa which they lost 5-0. Although he was not a bit impressive in the series, he wasn't alone. None of the bowlers enjoyed a good time in that trip. But the selectors chose to give the best ODI bowler of 2016 the axe.
Hastings admitted to being stunned by the omission but the selectors felt that with Starc, Hazlewood and Cummins returning, Hastings had no business in the ODI side. He had picked a career-best haul of 6/45 against Sri Lanka just a month prior to that.