6 January

The multi-millionaire cricketers are winning games, but players seem to have the ascendancy over selectors now. Pathetic Test play by most other nations has hidden the problem. Warner’s performances have been in free fall for a long time. We may have won the last Ashes series outright for example, without his hopeless batting there. And on the topic of hidden declines, Steve Smith was lauded only a few years ago as having the second greatest batting average in history, behind only Bradman. He’s now 11th in the all-time list.