And the person to replace Hilditch is........

Former Test player John Inverarity has been named as Australian cricket's new full-time national selector, heading a panel of five including captain Michael Clarke.

Cricket Australia this afternoon named the West Australian to take over in the newly-created role, established as a result of the Argus report into Australian team performance.

Inverarity replaces outgoing chairman of selectors Andrew Hilditch, who is departing along with fellow selectors Greg Chappell and Jamie Cox.

Advertisement: Story continues below Other candidates included Rod Marsh, Trevor Hohns and Tom Moody.

Inverarity's is the second major appointment since the Argus report was dropped following the naming of former Wallaby Pat Howard as general manager of team performance.

Inverarity, 67, was appointed for a three-year term.

He played six Tests for Australia between 1968 and 1972 and was a renowned thinker on the game in a first-class career which spanned 223 games.

‘‘In general terms, what we have got to do is get the off-field team together,’’ Inverarity said.

‘We need to find two further selectors and the coach but generally my outlook would be just harnessing the talent that is around and investing opportunities wisely to young players.’’

Sutherland said Inverarity was a standout applicant for the role.

‘‘He was the outstanding candidate in the large number of applicants we had,’’ Sutherland said.

‘‘His credentials are outstanding ... and he is clearly in touch with the game today.’’



Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/inverarity-named-crickets-new-fulltime-selector-20111028-1mnkl.html#ixzz1c363QPxR

Congrats to Invers. Hopefully he can bring some sanity and humility to the position, not to mention success.

I just think it's great that they've replaced Hilditch with a person.

And I'm sure there'll be some pearls of wozzie wisdom coming from A.

Just hope the years Invers spent in Soz haven't hilditched his cricket brain

the one thing you can say aboout Invers was that he worked bloody hard at the game and did well with modest talents..hope he continues to value those qualities among the prospects for selection

Can't help wondering if we'd been better off making Invers captain instead of Yallop in 78-79, as all Press west of Altona and north of the Ford factory wanted.

Interesting selection. The test will be to see if he sticks to the status quo or becomes his own man & how he copes with the pressure of the biased dubber media.

Fred Nerk wrote:Can't help wondering if we'd been better off making Invers captain instead of Yallop in 78-79, as all Press west of Altona and north of the Ford factory wanted.

I'm sure we should have ... he would have been a great asset to the side ... a much more able opponent for Brearley

Inverarity was quite a bit a bit before my time. He has excellent first class stats but only played six tests, in which he didn't seem to do terribly.

How come he didn't play more for Australia?

Didn't perform well enough on the few occasions he was given a chance ... and certainly wasn't favoured by Chappelli (who would have viewed him as a rival),

I think the real opportunity to get him back into the Test team was lost in 1977-78, when Simpson was preferred.

Was at a NSW v WA Shield match around 1980 and Invers was crabbing very slowly. Not many at the game but all of us laughed when a wag on the Hill yelled "FFS Invers, if you took this long to satisfy your wife, she'd divorce you tomorrow."

Didn't Invers once have the Sheffield Shield most career runs record?

And I think he was most famous in tests for being the last person out in the fuselism (sp) test.

Actually I think it was the 5th Test of the 1968 Ashes series. It had p!ssed down, flooding the ground, seemingly ruining England's chances of victory. Dozens from the crowd (with pitchforks and any pointy things they could find to bore holes in the turf) worked along side groundstaff to help drain the ground quicker. Inverarity had opened and had almost seen Aus home with a defiant 56 against a rampant Deadly Derek (who took 7-50), when he inexplicably shouldered arms and was lbw, to allow England to square the series 1-1.

The Fusarium Test was the 4th Test of the 1972 Ashes at farkin' Headingley. A fungus (more likely a wire brush) had killed all the grass on the pitch paving the way for Deadly Derek to take 10-82 in the match and take England to an unassailable 2-1 lead, so they retained the Ashes regained in 70-71. I can vaguely remember my ol' man cursing the cheating Poms.

He shouldered arms because he thought he wouldn't be given out LBW with the ball striking him that far outside off stump.

Only seen grainy film of it Wally, but what stuck in my mind was the whole English side clustered around the bat as Derek Underwood weaved his magic.

I reckon that ball had no hope of hitting the stumps.




.

I'll accept your views, W. Unfortch, the scoreboard apparently never lies.

Cheers for the pic, W.

Had a poke around on Ewetube, but can't locate a clip at this stage.

When the ball struck his pad he wasn't as far across as that photo shows but it was not going to hit the stumps.

"Actually I think it was the 5th Test of the 1968 Ashes series. It had p!ssed down, flooding the ground, seemingly ruining England's chances of victory. Dozens from the crowd (with pitchforks and any pointy things they could find to bore holes in the turf) worked along side groundstaff to help drain the ground quicker"

Moral of the story: Never, never present a Pom with an opportunity to bore effectively.

The mental image of a few hundred Wurzel Gummidges on the Oval doing their thing with their pitchforks is almost worth the result, spesh seeing as the Ashes were in the bag regardless.

skully wrote:"FFS Invers, if you took this long to satisfy your wife"

That's a bad thing?

horace wrote:the one thing you can say aboout Invers was that he worked bloody hard at the game and did well with modest talents..hope he continues to value those qualities among the prospects for selection

Inverarity, that rarity
Who invariably seeks parity
And variety in his party?