The Long Handle

A new, revolutionary selection method

The Sanath will end all debates about faulty team-picking

Andrew Hughes
Andrew Hughes
15-Nov-2014
"Of course we will give weightage to classiness and erudition in the algorithm"  •  AFP

"Of course we will give weightage to classiness and erudition in the algorithm"  •  AFP

Sometimes great leaders cannot help but speak profound truths, even when they aren't trying. For example, worried that the Gettysburg Address didn't have enough laughs in it, Abraham Lincoln inserted into the original draft some humorous lines on the subject of stove pipe hats, remarking that: "four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new piece of millinery, little realising that it would make the wearer look as though he were balancing a chimney upon his head".
Sadly these lines didn't make it into the final version, but on the subject of the stovepipe hat, Lincoln was ahead of his time, and just 151 years later, almost no one goes out of doors wearing one of those ridiculous concoctions.
Cricket too has its visionary. Sanath Jayasuriya, the Muscles from Matara, the man who almost single-handedly turned 50-over cricket from a microwave version of Test cricket into a full-blooded, six runs an over slogathon via the power of his Popeye-proportioned forearms and a flashing chunk of willow, is also something of a prophet.
Sanath has since risen to the rank of chairman of selectors, and it was from this august office that this week he imparted something of great profundity and foresight:
"If the players are going to do our job, what is the point of having selectors at all?"
He was responding to the recent indiscretions of senior players who have let slip key decisions from secret selection meetings, including Mahela Jayawardene's suggestion that next time Sanath should bring his own biscuits. But Sanath's outburst reveals an existential truth. What is the point of selectors? Could the money forked out on these pin-stickers be better spent on other more effective methods of team-picking?
I don't think it could be left to the players. If we'd let the senior pros pick the team, Sourav Ganguly would still be playing for India and Alec Stewart would be claiming that he had at least another two Ashes series in him. Players are like school children. They are much given to squabbling and name-calling and if you let them run things, pretty soon you're left with a team full of Alastair Cook's friends.
We could adopt the approach of the English selectors in the 1980s and simply write down the name of every professional cricketer in England, tip them into a champagne bucket, ask Colonel Something or other to have a rummage, and send a congratulatory telegram to the first 11 names he pulls out.
But technology could soon have the answer. If human beings can come up with the Duckworth Lewis system, the DRS system and the remarkable hair restoration system that has so revolutionised the top of Shane Warne's head, then I'm sure we can devise an automated selection algorithm. Just feed in the necessary data (batting average, age, body mass index, IQ, probability of punching someone in a nightclub, tweets per day) press "select" and hey presto: the computer does the hard work, whether you're choosing a strike-proof one-day squad, or a funky new T20 team to impress the newspapers.
And when we do finally crack the secret of automated algorithmic selection, it should be named after the visionary who inspired it. The Sanath Jayasuriya Selection Method, or "The Sanath" for short will become synonymous with randomly chosen collectives of cricketers. "Don't blame me," coaches will say, "I can only work with what the Sanath gives me," and journalists will have no choice but to nod in agreement, because as every student knows, you can't argue with an algorithm.

Andrew Hughes is a writer currently based in England. @hughandrews73