He seems to have lost a lot of power with his stroke-making. Particularly in the one-day game, he seems to struggle to hit boundaries ...

Well, he shouldn’t struggle. He’s fit as a fiddle, isn’t he? I think he’s changed his way of looking at the game, decided he wants to  occupy the crease and push it into the gaps, rather than being the hitter he used to be. It’s all a mindset thing with him – he got out of the practice of hitting the ball. He’s just looking to find the gaps rather than hit the boundaries. And I think he should change that.

What about the selectors? They’ve picked five quicks and just one specialist spinner for this World Cup. Reckon that’s a bit foolish?

Well, the selectors are obviously looking for the part-timers to bowl most of the spin – blokes like Hussey and Smith and Clarke. I’m confident they’ve got the spin option covered. I think those blokes can do the job of a second specialist spinner.As far as the quicks are concerned, I think Ryan Harris is our best one-day bowler, so his injury’s a real blow. I also think Clint McKay would’ve been in that squad if he wasn’t injured. So with the loss of those two they’ve opted for bowlers like Tait and Lee who are quick through the air, rather than being bowlers who generate pace off the pitch. They’re clearly hoping that if they’re quick enough through the air, then it doesn’t matter how slow and low the wickets are.I think the one glaring omission from the squad is Dan Christian. He’s been one of the form players in the domestic one-day comp all year. He’s a great hitter of the ball who can win you a game with the bat. His bowling might be a little inconsistent, but he gets wickets, and he’s an outstanding fieldsman. I would’ve had him in there ahead of John Hastings, to be honest.

Mark Waugh Portrait Mark Waugh Portrait
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On that Hastings selection, is that the selectors looking to justify their existence with the stroke-of-genius decision?

Sometimes as a selector you have to go with a gut feeling – it’s not all about facts and figures – and that gut feeling’s part of being a good selector. I also think selectors go with the word around the traps. They listen to certain players talking about other players and they’ll often run with a decision on the basis of that. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

In defence of John Hastings, his performances have been pretty good for Victoria. But, in my eyes, he’s always going to be a good state player who doesn’t quite match-up at international level. Hopefully he’ll prove me wrong.

 Is the 50-over format in strife? 

At times I think it is, because there are just too many games. I mean, really, why did we play a seven-match series against England? It gets boring for players and spectators and that obviously leads to players not performing their best, or blokes with niggling injuries opting to take matches off. Look, a good game of one-day cricket is still very entertaining and there’s definitely still room for it in cricket’s calendar. But they’ve got to be careful there’s not too much of it, because people get bored watching the same players playing against each other over and over. I think Cricket Australia’s got to look at shortening series to five or even three games maximum.

I also think there needs to be more responsibility on the captains to set attacking fields. If you’ve got a team 4/50, why would you put all your men on the boundary? Keep your men up, keep the pressure on the batsmen, make them hit over the infield a bit more. I think captains tend to fall back on the defensive option too often. They’ve got to play their part in producing entertaining and attacking cricket.

Gideon Haigh has suggested that the one-day game could be improved if all the bowling and fielding restrictions were removed. Reckon this simpler formula would work? 

I don’t agree with that. You make those changes and all you’re left with is a one-day Test match. It’s good to have different forms of the game.I think there are changes you could make – for example, it would be good if they allowed one bowler to bowl 12 overs instead of the regulation 10. But I think you want to maintain the basic fabric of one-day cricket.

Going back to the Ashes Tests last summer – we keep hearing talk of the “transition period” but the performances were so diabolical surely there’s a deeper malaise in Australian cricket right now?

Well, look, the transition period’s over – that’s just an excuse now. We’ve got enough good players around the place to move beyond that.

But looking at the state competition at the moment, looking at the standard of players we’ve got there, I don’t think we’ve got the depth of quality players we’ve had in recent years. That’s how simply I see it – we haven’t quite got the quality players. So when we get a few injuries or players drop out of form, we’re not replacing them with guys we’re 100 per cent sure are going to do the job. I think that’s why we’re trying so many spinners, and running through so many fast bowlers – the depth of talent isn’t quite what it was. The reasons for that? I’m not sure.

Do you think that the junior pathways and the Academy system is starting to produce monochrome, robotic cricketers?

I’m not sure about that. When I was growing up there wasn’t a Cricket Academy so we learnt the game playing club cricket. You know, I was playing first grade for Bankstown when I was 17. And that’s a pretty good learning curve for a teenager – playing against grown men, tough competitors, in first grade. Nowadays when you watch grade cricket they’re all just young blokes coming through, and then you get the cream of that young talent going to the Academy to play their cricket. So that may be a reason why we’re not producing as many good players.

In recent years Australian teams have copped a lot of flak for being too aggressive, too confrontational on the field, but in this Ashes series the team looked meek at points. Do you think they’ve subconsciously given in to the criticism?

No, I don’t think that’s right. I mean, look at Mitchell Johnson – he got in batsmens’ faces a few times. Obviously the image of sportsmen these days is put under so much scrutiny in the media, and that then flows on to sponsors and money, which then flows on to the administrators who want the players to be clean as a whistle. So under all that pressure, the players want to do the right thing. But it’s a fine line, isn’t it? You’ve still got to have your players competitive, got to have them in the face of your opponents. When you’re losing you always go into your shell a little bit. It’s hard to sledge and get in blokes’ faces when you’re getting smacked around the park or when you’re getting out for less than ten all the time. It goes hand-in-hand – when you’re playing well and winning it’s much easier to be upfront with the opposition.But even if they’re not as aggressive as they used to be, that’s no excuse for not playing well, is it? Bottom line is: you’ve got to bat, bowl and catch well – it doesn’t matter what you say to the opposition.

It’s been mentioned post-Ashes that a lot of our younger batsmen simply don’t have the technique to thrive in long-form cricket. Is T20 cricket damaging our batsmen?

I don’t think it’s doing any damage whatsoever – that’s just an excuse for batsmen who fail. If anything, the T20 game should give batsmen a broader range of strokes to take into Test cricket. Beyond that, batsmen should be smart enough to say, ‘Right, this is a T20 game, so I’m going to play a different range of strokes to what I’d play in a Test match.’ They should be able to go into any match with their array of strokes and then pick out the strokes that are appropriate depending on the game and the conditions.

– Aaron Scott