Cricket Australia Contracted List

Witht the release today of the new Memorandum of Understanding between Cricket Australia (CA) and the Australian Cricketers Association (ACA), and the new contracted list for season 2012-13, there has been a great deal of discussion on those who have been deemed worthy of inclusion.

The toughest part of the process was the fact that the list has been pared back from the 25 contracts that has been the case for a number of years to just 17 - basically an Ashes squad number from the days when the one squad toured England for four or five months.

The list as named was as follows:
Michael Clarke
Pat Cummins
Xavier Doherty
Brad Haddin
Ryan Harris
Ben Hilfenhaus
David Hussey
Michael Hussey
Mitchell Johnson
Nathan Lyon
James Pattinson
Ricky Ponting
Peter Siddle
Mitchell Starc
Matthew Wade
Shane Watson
David Warner

Of the 17 players named, nine are bowlers, two are wicket-keepers and six are batsmen.
What can we take from this?

1. There are plenty of bowlers in the list, and given that all are fit you would expect that there will be rotation and resting of all of them to ensure their workload is managed properly.
2. The selectors obviously are not sure who the Test keeper should be. To be honest, it seems superfluous to have two keepers on the list. One would suggest that apart from indecision the selectors have on who should be the keeper, the reason both are contracted is the lack of batsmen in Australia pushing themselves to the front of the queue.
3. The selectors have no idea where our next batsmen are coming from. They have named only six specialist batsmen in their list - Clarke, Ponting, Michael and David Hussey, Watson and Warner. Neither Ed Cowan nor Peter Forrest were considered to be certainties to be in any of the Australian teams in twelve months time, and thus have missed out. So too players such as George Bailey, Phil Hughes or Usman Khawaja. In effect, the selectors are saying "We need someone to step up and answer the call". To every batsman in the country, it is a clear message - make runs and you will get a chance.

Only time will tell if this new system works. It has at least created a debate in the sports community about cricket during the off-season, keeping it to the forefront of discussion.