Time's up for slumping old men

Flaws in the domestic structure have contributed to Australia's sudden slump in the world stage and the most glaring of them all is the average age of players in Shield cricket, writes Peter Roebuck in the Sydney Morning Herald. Provincial players hang on as long as they can. They are clogging up the works and Australian cricket needs to find a ruthless response.

State teams are getting older. The average age is about 27, roughly the same as life expectancy in Zimbabwe - a jolly nice place to live, in the opinion of the cads running the ICC. Among contracted players, only a handful (5 per cent) are under 22. Contrastingly, 23 per cent are over 31. The average age of the Queensland squad is 29.4. Martin Love is still playing in his mid 30s, a batsman whose best days are long behind him. For goodness sake, Andrew Bichel is still available. But let's not pick on the banana-benders. Even NSW, the state most likely to encourage youth, has given Greg Mail, a lovely 31-year-old with a modest record as an opener, four Shield matches this year. Meanwhile, Warner, Usman Khawaja and Moises Henriques twiddle their thumbs. Plain and simple, it is wrong.