Hilditch too busy for two jobs
Australia’s chairman of selectors Andrew Hilditch has been under as much scrutiny as the players this season
Brydon Coverdale
25-Feb-2013
Australia’s chairman of selectors Andrew Hilditch has been under as much scrutiny as the players this season. A tabloid paper published photos on Sunday of Hilditch walking his dog in Adelaide instead of watching Matthew Hayden bat for his career and Robert Craddock in the Courier-Mail believes something is wrong with Australia’s selection panel.
It is a shame that officials who were upset by the photos have not put the same amount of effort into getting Hilditch to do his job better ... then there would have been no photos. Since he took over as national selection chairman Hilditch simply has not tackled his public responsibilities with the same gusto as his predecessors, Trevor Hohns and Laurie Sawle.
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As a full-time lawyer in Adelaide he already had a cramped schedule, perhaps too cramped to fit two jobs into one day. Even other selectors noted how difficult at times he was to contact, and how one of them had a phone battery go flat while waiting for Hilditch during a phone hook-up. But it is not as if he is being paid mere petrol money to do the job. As chairman, his salary of more than $100,000 is twice as much as those of the other three selectors - Merv Hughes, Jamie Cox and David Boon - and part of the extra money is a sweetener for being the public face of the panel. So far it has been a very private public face.
Brydon Coverdale is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. He tweets here