all-round nothing

I might never have seen it this way, but here’s a good piece. What would seem like an Aussies habit of having cricketing all-rounders, is but a crusade of finding or concocting them. They just have to glance at the player patterns of a team like India (heck, most teams in world cricket), to see that genuine all-rounders at number 6 in test squads are hardly to be expected, their rare existences to be cherished.

Gilchrist has spoilt the Australian team structure- all the while he was around, they could afford to have a slightly sub par batsman who could bowl, in the name of an all rounder. From the recent tryouts, I do believe Shane Watson (injury permitting) shows the most likelihood of filling that gap- to some extent. But the most pertinent argument made in this article is the one about squandering potentially superlative batting careers such as Hodge and David Hussey, in the almost unreal search for a true all rounder.