I know it's a little bit late, but with regards to the Brett Lee injury - he's 35 years old, I reckon it's time to say thanks for your wonderful service this past decade, but there's no point in holding the younger fellas back any longer.
With our depth of fasting bowling talent, is it really worth keeping Brett Lee around after his injury? Me thinks not.
I think the reason for Lee remaining is that the other young bowlers aren't really proven ODI bowlers yet. Talking Pattinson, Cummins, Hilf, Siddle here. None of those guys have done anything much of note in ODI cricket and you could argue that they shouldn't even play limited overs cricket at this stage - to preserve themselves for Tests and make sure they aren't wasting their time learning to bowl slower balls, containing lengths etc.
It can be argued that there are other young bowlers that could play instead of Lee eg. McDermott, Coulter-Nile, Faulkner etc. but how many young bowlers does Australia need? What is the ultimate aim here? Because I think Lee's still a better bowler than any of those guys.
Resting Sachin is a double edged sword. The best chance for him to get into his best flow is to play matches. But resting him now and not during the final stages of the league stage is also important.
Yeah there's plenty of arguments floating around about this rotation thing. Basically if your team loses people hate it, but if your team wins then it's genius. Same as usual... I see a great amount of good to be gained from playing the younger guys. There aren't many chances for Indians to play in Australia and this is a good one to learn about Australian grounds, pitches, outfields, crowds etc. I'd be rotating the old guys out as much as I dared if I were Fletcher. I think though with 8 games before the finals, EVERY player could get 2 or 3 games off and you're still playing plenty of cricket.
Feels good to be able to sit back and not give a damn who's picked or rested for Australia, while your opponents scramble to put together a team capable of winning.
In saying that, I wouldn't mind Forrest coming in for Punter, M. Marsh for Dave and maybe Hilfy for Harris. 1 or 2 of the 3 should happen anyways.
The 12 has already been named. Hilfy's been sent home, and Mr Cricket is resting. So it's 11 of: Warner, Wade, Ponting, Clarke, D.Hussey, Forrest, Christian, M.Marsh, Harris, McKay, Starc and Doherty. One of those first 8 to miss out: so it's Forrest vs M.Marsh to take Mike Hussey's spot for the day.
