Winds of cricket change could be draft

There is a strange sense of anguish about present-day Australian cricket

Defeat is tough. Losses against the team we hate more than any other in world sport are excruciating.

And considering we haven't lost an Ashes series at home since 1986-87 there are a lot of avid Australian cricket fans that don't know what it is like to watch first-hand their side cop it from the Poms. Enter a strange new world.

But it is from that generation that Australia wi ll draw on talent to turnaround their flagging fortunes.

Unfortunately, the cupboard is a little bare at the moment. Indeed, the Australian team has been playing on rations, too often from NSW, for too long. And the combination looks like a mishmash of leftovers.

The gumleaf mafia have put a price on the Test captain's head and the person set to fill his concrete shoes doesn't quite have the blessing of all the cricket mob. Other candidates are reluctant to come forward. One of the openers should be batting lower in the order, the No.6 batsman is a bowler and the nation's best spinner, whoever that may be this week, doesn't play at all.

So how can we fix Australian cricket? There needs  to be some winds of change and it could a draft.

A scheme discussed by some in State cricket circles is for an annual player lottery, just like the AFL, NBA and NFL, to be introduced for the Sheffield Shield competition.

About 90 of the country's best players, consisting of proportional representation of bowlers, batsmen, allrounders and wicketkeepers, could be centrally contracted by Cricket Australia.

Each team could then have a selection of players from the various categories to make up their squad.

The system would mean the best openers in the land get to open. One State wouldn't have an overload of players in one category, such as the predicament facing Blues slogger David Warner, who can't get a first-class berth despite being one of the first picked for his country at Twenty20 level.

Better bowlers would be bowling to better batsmen because the cream of the nation's talent would be spread around.

It is interesting to note the number of Shield players that are now playing for adopted States. Look at how Simon Katich and David Hussey have prospered after leaving WA for greater opportunity. And consider Adam Gilchrist's rise after he came west because he couldn't squeeze into the NSW team.

A stronger competition should develop more skilled players.

Significantly, the MCC cricket committee, which influences the governorship of the game, indicated during its recent Perth meeting that it now wished international T20 was a city-based, not country-based competition, because the game's top players could have been drafted out to the teams in Miami, Shanghai and Tokyo. The game would supposedly flourish.

The draft scheme presents issues, such as how Cricket Australia would ensure development of the game at grass roots level if the respective States wouldn't automatically benefit from producing kids in their own backyard.

But a freer system of player transfer has traditionally proven to be a benefit rather than a hindrance to sports.

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