SYDNEY — Former Australia cricket captain Steve Waugh and paceman Jason Gillespie have both expressed an interest in succeeding Rodney Marsh as the country’s chairman of selectors.
Cricket Australia said last week 68-year-old former Test wicketkeeper Marsh would not be seeking to stay on in the role when his contract expires next year and that Australia would have a new chairman of selectors before the next Ashes series.
Australia will host the next Ashes series in 2017-18.
Former paceman Gillespie is currently coaching Adelaide Strikers in Australia’s Twenty20 Big Bash League after spending five years coaching English county side Yorkshire.
“There is a national selector’s job up next year and I might put my name up for that,” he told News Ltd. “All I have done the last five years is select teams for Yorkshire. I wouldn’t rule anything out. If there are opportunities I will look at it.”
Former Test captain Waugh, who announced his retirement in 2004, said he would be willing to discuss the job if an offer came his way.
“I’d listen to it if the opportunity came up, but there are a lot of things you’ve got to throw into the mix and see whether it’s the right time,” Waugh told the Sydney Morning Herald.
“I think there are a lot of good cricket brains in Australia. No one has asked me, but I’d listen to it.”
Under Marsh’s chairmanship of the panel, Australia lost the 2015 Ashes series in England but won the 50-overs World Cup on home soil in the same year and held the No. 1 ranking in Test cricket for six months earlier this year.
‘Summer to make or
break Smith’s captaincy’
Steve Waugh says the summer Test series against South Africa and Pakistan is shaping up as make or break for Steve Smith’s captaincy of the national side.
Smith became skipper last year after Michael Clarke retired and has come under the microscope after a 3-0 Test series defeat in Sri Lanka followed by a 5-0 one-day whitewash by South Africa.
Waugh said the results in the upcoming home summer series could be telling.
“You always have a honeymoon period, the first six to 12 months, everything is fantastic. You make all the changes and they work. Then the reality sets in and it’s a bit harder than that,” he told Tuesday’s Sydney Morning Herald.
“I think losing that series in Sri Lanka probably was a bit of a shock to the system. I thought our fielding was very poor, which is unlike Australia, and that sort of set the benchmark for the rest of their cricket.”
Waugh said Smith was the type of player who responds when the going gets tough and expects him to be thinking hard about how he will handle the South Africa and Pakistan challenges. — Agencies
