Hilditch regards job like he did the batting crease

"Digger" by nickname and by nature. Midway through the independent review that will determine his future, Australia's chairman of selectors Andrew Hilditch is hanging onto his job as stubbornly as he once did the batting crease.

The Don Argus review is now deep into the process of interviewing some 60 persons of interest relating to Australian cricket, as Argus and panel members including Allan Border, Steve Waugh and Mark Taylor assess what must be rectified in order to avoid a repeat of last summer's disastrous Ashes series.

Hilditch has been interviewed, and said he was yet to worry about what conclusions might be drawn about his leadership of a selection panel that has stumbled and bumbled as much as the team itself over the past three years.

"I'll just keep doing it until someone wants me to stop," Hilditch said of his future. "It's one of the greatest periods in the sense that it's just so demanding, but at the same time it's exciting for the players because they have great challenges, and we have great challenges as a selection panel to get it right.

"I've been very lucky; I didn't have much of a contribution to Australian cricket as a player, but I'm really enjoying this role, doing the best I possibly can. If someone decides there's a better way to go then I'll be fully supportive of that as well."

Hilditch's contract expired at the end of the World Cup, but he was granted a stay of execution by Argus' desire to leave things as unchanged as possible while the review is in progress.

"That's a really exciting process; I've been part of it and I think it'll come up with some strong recommendations for all parts of Australian cricket," said Hilditch. "It may well lead to a review of the selection panel, but that's not something I have to worry about; I'm just doing the best job I can."

James Sutherland, the Cricket Australia chief executive and an ex-officio, non-voting member of the review panel, said the integrity of the process was of great importance.

"It is well and truly underway. I understand people will want to know how things are proceeding there and I'm certainly not going to give a ball-by-ball commentary," he said. "But the integrity of the process in working through that review is very important to the panel chairman and the panel members, and one of the things as part of that process, is it's very important for us to spend time with key stakeholders in an interview sense. It's an in-depth process.

"We'll be interviewing in the vicinity of 60 people, but until we've gone through that interview process stage and distilled all the other submissions from other parties, we're not going to be able to look at outcomes."

Such outcomes will include whether or not Hilditch can be permitted to continue chairing the selection panel in a part-time capacity. Having taken Australia through a period of transition that is almost a generation old but has shown little sign of blooming into sustained success, Hilditch said much depended on the next group of young players developing into "champions".

"We're still playing pretty good one-day and Twenty20 cricket," he said. "Test cricket is our big concern, and we've injected players into that, young batsmen, and two very exciting young quicks. We really need to find two or three champions in the next two years and in some of those young players we think we've got two or three champions."