It's the Big Bash, but it's also pitch preparation. Back when Border led us out of the wilderness, and delivered into Taylor's hands a strong team, which was then passed to Waugh, and finally Ponting ... well, back then every test ground had its own character. The SCG was conducive to spin, Perth was bouncy, Adelaide a batsman's paradise, Bellerive took seam, Melbourne would change across the 5 days, and the Gabba would start out nice for the quicks and bats, then produce results for spinners later.
Now we're in the era of the drop-in pitch, and the variation in pitches has been reduced significantly. There's less in them for the bowlers, in particular the SCG is no longer a spinners playground, and Perth doesn't bounce as much as it used to. The Gabba remains much as it used to be, but it was always the "middle of the road" option. Adelaide remains a batsman's paradise mostly, but that doesn't help us to develop better batsmen.
All up, the current generation of Aussie batsmen have grown up playing Shield cricket where the pitches are too similar to each other, with the result that they aren't facing enough variety of conditions and simply don't know how to adapt any more. Thus, they get turned over by any of the following: half decent spin, reverse swing, seam bowling (especially of the variety the Saffers produced in Hobart, where they got some bounce to go with it), late swing. And they make big scores if the bowling is straight up and down.
Smith, Warner, and (hopefully) Khawaja will form the core 3 bats over the next 4-5 years at least, and should be a strong trio for us. Warner's the oldest of the lot at a tick over 30 years old, and I suspect he'll keep going well into his mid-late 30's as long as he's still producing big scores regularly enough to get picked. Much as Cook has been the constant at the top for England, that'll be Warner's role while Australia searches for the #2 opener (which can take a while, as England has shown already). Khawaja has the ability to become a strong #3, but the selectors need to stop dicking him about. I get the impression he's a confidence player, and needs to feel like he's got the trust of the team and selectors to get the most out of him. I think dropping him for the 3rd test in SL was a big mistake that's cost us a bit against SA. Smith is a given: he's the captain, for one, and the only bat who showed any backbone in Hobart. When he's in form, he delivers big - and there's no one else in the team currently who I'd entrust with permanent captaincy.
Around those three, we need to bite the bullet: no more parachuting in mid-30's guys who got overlooked when they were in their prime years. Now that Voges has been forced out due to the concussion, I'd leave him out permanently. So of the new guys: I believe Handscomb is one of the guys who's been right on the edge of being selected for a couple of seasons now. He's got a good Shield average of over 40, but he's been overlooked in favour of other players with poorer averages for some reason (such as Ferguson; much older and with a worse average). Now he's forced his way in, I hope the selectors allow him a solid run to find his feet. Renshaw is unknown to me, but looking at his results so far this season, and reading some of what's been said about him, he may be just the guy we're looking for to be Warner's foil. I've seen it mentioned that he's a "Rogers" style opener, placing a high price on his wicket and willing to play the long game when necessary. Maddinson ... I'm worried about. He's been mentioned as an eventual Aussie middle order player for a while now, but his Shield average isn't great (sub-40) and he's apparently prone to getting himself out through boredom/frustration. He's also been picked ahead of one of his NSW teammates who picked up a half century in the latest Shield game (in which Maddinson had a double failure) and has a better season average. Apparently Smith is a big fan of Maddinson's talent and thinks he can coax good results out of him - so he's been picked on subjective potential rather than objective results.
Wade's in for Nevill not because he's technically better, but because there's a correlation between Wade being replaced by Nevill and Australia's tail no longer scoring rear-guard runs. Apparently they think Wade's better at coaxing runs out of the tail than Nevill is, so Wade gets the nod (he's also improved his 'keeping, and his 'keeping being sub-par is what got him dropped in the first place).
I heard Lyon was going to get chopped, but O'Keefe got injured. So we keep Lyon, which is OK by me. Personally, though, I'd like to see the selectors take a punt on Zampa at some point this summer. Perhaps alongside Lyon when we go to the SCG (despite what I said above, it does still turn a *bit*). Bowling side of things we're still strong. The problem we've had vs SA is that they didn't pick the strongest (available) bowling line up because they were trying to stick a bandaid on the gaping wounds in the top 6 (ie pick Mennie because he's a better bat than Bird). I'd rather have the best bowling line up available and put the onus on the bats to get the runs ... because if the bats don't get the runs, you need to take 20 wickets as cheaply as you can.
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