Tait bolts into view
Peter English
25-Feb-2013
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Malcolm Conn writes in The Australian how Shaun Tait is keeping both batsmen and selectors guessing.
The broad South Australian speedster was not in the frame for a Test recall until he demolished England with an inspired spell of fast bowling for the Prime Minister's XI a week ago at Manuka Oval. Now the selectors have taken the unusual step of choosing a 13-man squad for next week's first Test in Brisbane, in case Tait skittles England when he lines up for South Australia in a three-day match, beginning today in Adelaide.
It would have been profoundly embarrassing if the selection panel, chaired by former Australia opener Andrew Hilditch, had chosen a 12-man squad and then watched Tait fire out England's finest.
Tait is also the subject of a piece by Robert Craddock in The Courier Mail.
Is he the new Jeff Thomson, a super slinger capable of carving a destructive path around the cricket world? Or will he be a player who burns brightly but briefly between injury setbacks, his body unable to handle the freakish stress applied by his whipcord action? No one seems certain, which only adds to his mystique.
In the Sydney Morning Herald Alex Brown profiles Shane Watson’s rise from the outer to first-choice allrounder. Peter Roebuck runs his eye over the first-Test squad in the same paper.
In off-field events Mitchell Johnson shows off his new girlfriend in The Courier-Mail and Wally Lewis, the rugby league great, hops on the Ashes train.
Peter English is former Australasia editor of ESPNcricinfo