England Cricket / Andrew Hughes / 14 August 2008 / Leave a comment

Cricket fanatic Andrew Hughes bemoans the lack of Test opportunities offered to Owais Shah and puts forward a case for the classy Middlesex batsman to be handed a seat on the plane to India for this winter's tour.

This has not been a vintage year in the careers of England selectors Geoff Miller, Ashley Giles and James Whitaker. The harsh treatment of Hoggard, the continuing and baffling overlooking of Simon Jones, the Pattinson debacle and the stubborn reluctance to drop misfiring batsmen all adds evidence to a bulging file on selectoral incompetence.

To be strictly fair to Miller's merry band of misfits, this year's selectoral pratfalls and bloopers are as nothing compared to the cavalcade of incompetence English cricket has witnessed over the last twenty years. The cricket landscape of the 1980s and 1990s was littered with the wrecks of innumerable careers as players were picked and dropped on a whim.

Yet though the days of scattergun selections may be over, there are still one or two skeletons in this regime's closet. Some would argue that the failure to pick Mark Ramprakash was a depressingly familiar nose-cutting off exercise that harked back to the scandalous lack of opportunity that David Gower got towards the end of his career.

Personally, I have a little more sympathy for Owais Shah, the man who's classical strokeplay and youthful promise was once compared with Ramprakash. In recent weeks, young England hopeful Ravi Bopara has been given to complain about his lack of opportunities in the Test team. He would do well to reflect on Shah's experiences before whining to any more journalists.

Shah made his England debut in a one day game in 2001. He waited a long six years to make his Test debut, called up as an injury replacement in Mumbai, another eighteen months for his second Test cap and hasn't been picked since.

It could hardly be said that he'd failed. An average of 34.00 from four innings is not exactly conclusive proof of unfitness for Test cricket. And despite his regular selection for the one day side and some impressive performances in the shorter game, such as helping Middlesex to this year's Twenty20 Cup, he is certainly not regarded as a one-day specialist likely to be out of his depth in the five day game.

So why hasn't he played more often? You could argue that his chances were inevitably limited when England were having their long run of success under Michael Vaughan. But it is harder to explain his omission since then. Shah himself has played it sensibly, not complaining too loudly about lack of opportunities, following the example of Aussie batsmen Mike Hussey and Phil Jaques, who had to wait so long for their chances. But there's the rub. The English batting line-up can hardly be compared to their Antipodean counterparts. It's one thing to be kept out of the batting line-up by Ponting, Clarke and Hayden, but Bell, Collingwood and Bopara?

Indeed it may be the young allrounder from Essex who turns out to be Shah's nemesis once again this winter. Bafflingly preferred to Shah in the Test series in Sri Lanka last year, he was selected ahead of the Middlesex man for the final Test at the Oval (even though he was eventually left out in favour of the extra bowler) and has scored a stack of runs this summer. With only two Tests in India, it is unlikely that England will want more than fourteen players and with the five batsmen from the Oval certain to go and Bopara's all-round ability likely to earn him a place, that doesn't leave a lot of room on the plane.

But it would be a selectoral blunder if he were not to be picked. He has been a solid and reliable county performer for a number of years, has the technique and application to thrive in India and is thoroughly used to the international set-up. He is capable of batting as high as three or as low as six and would be an ideal replacement for either Bell or Collingwood in the middle order. Of course, such logic may not appeal to selectoral brains. It is to be hoped therefore that Shah makes such a pile of runs in the upcoming Natwest Series, that his selection is all but inevitable.

Tags: cricket bets, Middlesex, Owais Shah, Ravi Bopara