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Nice conspiracy theory you have here. Three other Australian players had averages lower than Clarke for the series, Ponting, North and Hughes with Katich's only three runs higher. Ponting should have been dropped before Clarke as his form was even worse than Clarke's was. But blaming Vodafone for incorrect team selection is pretty far-fetched.
This is not a conspiracy theory though. Clarke is on Vodafone's payroll, receiving a million dollars for a three year deal which commenced in June 2010. Cricket Australia is also sponsored by Vodafone and controls selection.
You think it's far-fetched? There may not be a Vodafone executive sitting in on selection meetings, but do you really think Cricket Australia, going into the "Vodafone" test series, is going to drop Vodafone's spokesman from the team?
Form Players Only said:What I'm saying is that this pressure should be removed from team selection and nothing but the merit of performance be considered. Sponsor politics and sponsorship money should have no place in deciding who makes a representative team.
I don't mind players being sponsored and I don't mind CA being sponsored, but there is a huge conflict of interest if a sponsor has both a player, and the body that selects him, on its payroll.
I'm perfectly happy for Ponting, North, Katich and Hughes's fortunes to rest on their performances as well. In fact, spill the whole team, have them all play a few Shield games then pick the best performing eleven from the entire first-class pool. Give us players in hot form and we wouldn't have lost tests by an innings on home soil.
I actually believe that there should be no human factor in team selection, with regular, monthly or fortnightly scheduled substitutions where the worst performing batsman and bowler are automatically replaced with the highest performing Shield players over that period. But I've posted on that too.
Bottom line - don't let CA have a financial interest in selecting ANY individual player over another. This is not a club, it's a national representative team and only form should count.
Do you really think Australia would drop its vice-captain on the back of a poor series? Disregarding any deals and endorsements that Clarke has with Vodafone, he's the vice captain and is in a pretty much undroppable position regardless of what sponsorships he has. Clarke's form would have had to have gotten so bad that his form would have to demand he be dropped and while it was poor I don't think CA will get rid of their vice-captain on the back of a few poor innings.
Suggesting that Vodafone is having some sort of influence on who is picked is a tinfoil hat theory at best. You seem to be finding other ways to suggest that Clarke was kept in the team purely because of the dollars rather than the selectors showing some faith and picking a player who was the team's second in charge at the time.
Sorry mate but I'm not buying your story at all, it's ludicrous to think that Vodafone is having some sort of impact on whether a player is picked or not. Clarke is a senior member of the team and his position is relatively safe given he was the vice-captain and is now the team's skipper. Several other player also endorse Vodafone whilst the Australian summer is on, some of whom aren't in team anymore as they have been dropped or have retired.
I seriously doubt financial interests would determine which players are picked to represent Australia, we aren't a "pay" team.
Do you really think Australia would drop its vice-captain on the back of a poor series? Disregarding any deals and endorsements that Clarke has with Vodafone, he's the vice captain and is in a pretty much undroppable position regardless of what sponsorships he has. Clarke's form would have had to have gotten so bad that his form would have to demand he be dropped and while it was poor I don't think CA will get rid of their vice-captain on the back of a few poor innings.
Suggesting that Vodafone is having some sort of influence on who is picked is a tinfoil hat theory at best. You seem to be finding other ways to suggest that Clarke was kept in the team purely because of the dollars rather than the selectors showing some faith and picking a player who was the team's second in charge at the time.
Sorry mate but I'm not buying your story at all, it's ludicrous to think that Vodafone is having some sort of impact on whether a player is picked or not. Clarke is a senior member of the team and his position is relatively safe given he was the vice-captain and is now the team's skipper. Several other player also endorse Vodafone whilst the Australian summer is on, some of whom aren't in team anymore as they have been dropped or have retired.
I seriously doubt financial interests would determine which players are picked to represent Australia, we aren't a "pay" team.
My view is that representing Australia should not be easy, not an ongoing status without merit. Being in the Australian team already should not give a massive advantage to one player over other prospective players, no matter what they scored on debut 7 years ago. We need to turnover players and not make it such a big deal to be dropped. We need to test more players at international level. Remember that Clarke himself only averaged 40 at state level when picked to play for Australia and he instantly did well. All other cricketers deserve that chance too, if they are the highest performer in the country when a representative national team is picked.
Actually only Clarke has signed an ongoing deal with Vodaphone, apart from CA itself. The other players to appear in their ads receive one-off bonuses, which is fine. CA would have said "Who wants to go with Clarkey to do this ad? There's five grand in it for you", or something like that. Got no issue with CA being sponsored and those players under the CA blanket receiving cash for a one-off gig. Clarke's deal is very different. It's big bucks to be Vodafone's spokesman for a defined period of three years. You can bet that it was discussed between Cricket Australia and Vodafone, or at least hinted (and we're talking about a multinational company's marketing specialists here, not people who are just going to leave it to chance) that CA's own sponsorship would be a higher figure if Clarke were to be kept in the team, so he could remain visible and be better value for Vodafone.
Form Players Only said:If you're not convinced that's fine, I know I'm not going to convince everybody. But if you can't acknowledge the fact that CA's major sponsor having a financial interest in Clarke making the team places pressure on CA at selection time, you'd be missing the point of what I'm saying. Even if his form is bad enough to demand him being dropped, CA will not drop him until June 2013 at the earliest, at the expiration of Clarke's Vodafone contract.
Form Players Only said:Plenty of people thought that Clarke should have been dropped for the Ashes. Most of the nation was in uproar at the time. Polls were showing 80% of people wanted him gone. There was some pretty ugly stuff going around about him in forums and news article comments. It should have been easy for CA to drop him back to the Shield to pick up some form, as there was plenty of talent knocking on the door and the selectors had been ruthlessly targeted as being unable to make a tough decision. But they didn't drop Clarke.
Leading into the Ashes, in the series against Pakistan he averaged only 34. He then went to India and scored 14, 4, 14 and 3 as the Aussies crashed to defeat. He'd only hit two tonnes in the last five series, going back 16 months. You can argue whether he deserved the number 4 spot in the team or whether other batsmen in Australia would have done better. But most of Australia believed he was not deserving of his place in the national squad. With the ink on his new Vodafone deal still drying, Cricket Australia announced his selection in the "Vodafone Ashes Series".
Vice captaincy or captaincy should have no bearing either, as the leaders are selected from an announced team. You make a good point about that though. It's not the first time a player's captaincy/vice captaincy kept them in the team for too long. If you think back to the 90's, once Taylor / Healy went, it finally made room for the Waugh / Gilchrist domination period.
Whether or not CA think about Clarke's contract with Vodafone before they announce the team selection for a Vodafone test series is not really the point. The point is the potential is there. The rest is conjecture, sure.
Form Players Only said:Can you really disagree with any of these three statements though?
Clarke IS sponsored by Vodafone, Cricket Australia IS sponsored by Vodafone, and Vodafone WOULD be annoyed if their spokesman were dropped from the team.
Clarke still deserves one-day selection. I'm not talking about the fifty over game. He can captain that for as long as he's in form as far as I'm concerned.
Apart from Clarke personally, Vodafone only sponsor the test matches. The one-dayers and T-20s are sponsored by VB and KFC respectively, so Vodafone has no interest in them. It would be embarrassing for Vodafone if they constantly cut to a Michael Clarke Vodafone ad between test overs, but Clarke hadn't been selected by CA to pay those tests.
Clarke was dropped from the T-20 team because he was no good at scoring more than a run a ball, and didn't have a million dollars worth of KFC contract to save him. Some people believe Clarke "resigned" from the T-20 team, since that what he and CA announced. He said he was leaving to "focus on the other forms of cricket". If that's not an admission that his performances at test level weren't good enough, I don't know what is.
Why do you think the sponsorship thing is a conspiracy theory at best? It's player sponsorship, it happens everywhere, and it's out in the open here. It's got nothing to do with conspiracy, it's right in front of your eyes. Of course Vodafone would be annoyed if CA dropped their spokesman when they're sponsoring the test series. Whether or not CA acknowledge it, it's in their head. It has to be. They sat with Vodafone, negotiated with Vodafone, and signed the naming and signage rights over to them. CA want sponsorship, and they want to be seen to do the right things by their sponsors, so they get more in future. At the very least the additional sponsorship of Clarke is a conflict of interest, because CA's major sponsor stands to lose if they don't select Clarke. Vodafone lose out if their spokesman isn't selected to play by CA. How can you argue against this point? It's perfectly reasonable and others here have acknowledged that.
Yeah, I've played team sports. Cricket, hockey and football, but these were for clubs. I payed my fees and had my dose of competition for the weekend. The difference with the Australian cricket team is that it's supposed to represent the best of Australia. It's not a club, and selection in it should be a realistic outcome for the best performers in Australia. Continual selection of under-performers plus continual team failure will always put pressure on team morale. Team spirit is awesome, and it's more likely to be felt in a team where everybody knows that they all deserve their place. Not to mention the whole nation can all get behind the team. I've never seen so much division in the Australian cricket-watching public as exists today over Clarke's captaincy. If he deserves his place so much, I'd like to know how the vast majority formed an opposing opinion.
Clarke still deserves one-day selection. I'm not talking about the fifty over game. He can captain that for as long as he's in form as far as I'm concerned.
Apart from Clarke personally, Vodafone only sponsor the test matches. The one-dayers and T-20s are sponsored by VB and KFC respectively, so Vodafone has no interest in them. It would be embarrassing for Vodafone if they constantly cut to a Michael Clarke Vodafone ad between test overs, but Clarke hadn't been selected by CA to pay those tests.
Form Players Only said:Clarke was dropped from the T-20 team because he was no good at scoring more than a run a ball, and didn't have a million dollars worth of KFC contract to save him. Some people believe Clarke "resigned" from the T-20 team, since that what he and CA announced. He said he was leaving to "focus on the other forms of cricket". If that's not an admission that his performances at test level weren't good enough, I don't know what is.
Form Players Only said:Why do you think the sponsorship thing is a conspiracy theory at best? [?QUOTE]
If you really think Vodafone has an influence on team selection then you obviously have some very misplaced thoughts on the entire selection process.
Form Players Only said:It's player sponsorship, it happens everywhere, and it's out in the open here. It's got nothing to do with conspiracy, it's right in front of your eyes. Of course Vodafone would be annoyed if CA dropped their spokesman when they're sponsoring the test series. Whether or not CA acknowledge it, it's in their head. It has to be. They sat with Vodafone, negotiated with Vodafone, and signed the naming and signage rights over to them. CA want sponsorship, and they want to be seen to do the right things by their sponsors, so they get more in future. At the very least the additional sponsorship of Clarke is a conflict of interest, because CA's major sponsor stands to lose if they don't select Clarke. Vodafone lose out if their spokesman isn't selected to play by CA. How can you argue against this point? It's perfectly reasonable and others here have acknowledged that.
Sorry mate but I can't take you seriously when you keep sprouting theories like this. You've obviously given this a lot of thought which is good but I believe you're reading far too much into the Vodafone/Michael Clarke/Cricket Australia sponsorship arrangement.