The inside track: Smith can leave with head held high

To a world of Unnatural Laws such as Murphy’s, there can be added three that I like to think of as Selve’s Laws.

Selve’s First Law states that the dynamic new golf club you try out and decide will cut your handicap to semi-pro levels proves to be a stinker the moment you part with cash for it. The Second Law states that the car keys are always in the trouser pocket on the same side as the shopping you are carrying to the vehicle. The Third Law says that the requisite number of players in any sports team is always one more than permitted.

Ed Smith will certainly have had personal selection experience of the Third Law during his time as national selector, a role that all too often entails trying to fit a quart into a pint pot. My own, on the other hand, contained less responsibility, confined as it was to relatively informed pin-sticking in the pages of The Guardian. My team selections generally provoked some argument on the paper’s message boards, which in itself was telling. Once I decided to use social media as an exercise to see who people thought should be in a touring party of 16. In response, and leaving aside the flippant ones, I was suggested 33 names. 

So when Ed was doing it for real, it is easy to see that you cannot even come close to pleasing everybody. Now of course things have changed: Ed has gone, as has his role, and full responsibility now rests with the coach and presumably captain. Even this provokes argument. The general simplistic view seems to be that of course the coach and captain should be responsible for picking the players they will be charged with. So any failures will be down to them and them alone. We know where responsibility lies.

Personally, I think this is a mistake and it stems from a long-held view that selection needs a very largely evidence-based initial input from a body disassociated directly with the team: not independent as such but distanced to a degree. In theory, this is what Ed had as national selector. So he and his co-selectors picked a squad and handed it over.

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Again, in theory, it was always my contention that the process should be that the coach and captain make an assessment of the sort of players they want to fit their squad strategy for a forthcoming match, series, or tour, based on the opposition, venues, and so on. It should then be down to the national selector to find these players, the majority of whom of course would be obvious.

The problem has been that once the coach had been co-opted and as a voting rather than merely observing or advisory member of his selection panel, the autonomy he ought to have had was diluted. So there was always a danger of conflict: if the coach believes a certain player warrants selection in a squad but Ed, armed with a plethora of information, doesn’t, he either antagonises the coach in not selecting him, or loses his autonomy, while at the same time being overtly responsible should the player he never wanted prove a poor choice. What Ed had was a compromise, where effectively selection was by committee. 

At least we now have clarity. With one person making the decision rather than a corporate agreement (meetings rarely if ever came down to a vote so consensus and occasionally horse trading would win the day) selection is still either right or wrong but the single person who made it gains the plaudits or carries the can. 

I still believe that we should have a national selector but he should have complete autonomy, using everyone else as advisers but making all final squad decisions away from the collective. In that way, the responsibility is clear. 

As for Ed, I think he came out well in credit in his three years. I cannot say I agreed with every selection, and Stuart Broad clearly did not either (that, as I have said, is the nature of things); but my point is more about who was really behind some of the choices. Not all his, I would venture. One day soon, at Lord’s, over a drink, and unencumbered as he is now, we shall meet and chat and I might get the full story.

This article was published in the June edition of The Cricketer - the home of the best cricket analysis and commentary, covering the international, county, women's and amateur game