Waugh wants MacGill for Gabba

Steve Waugh suggests in his Daily Telegraph column something he did only twice as captain - picking Stuart MacGill for the first Test at the Gabba.

Legspin is England's achilles heel and it's our great fortune to have the two best exponents of this craft residing in Australia. For that reason, I believe Stuart MacGill should join Shane Warne in the first Test line-up at the Gabba.

The single most important set of statistics in deciding Australia's first Test team belong to Pakistan reject Mushtaq Ahmed. During the English county cricket season he claimed a monumental 102 wickets - 41 more than the next best, including 11 five-wicket hauls at an average of under 20 at a strike rate of one wicket every six overs.

Robert Craddock, writing on the FoxSports website, worries about Michael Clarke.

Brett Lee was in the next net as Kevin Pietersen faced a series of short balls from the bowling machine in Sydney, reports Alex Brown in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Kevin Pietersen exhaled, smiled and turned. "Anybody want to come in here," he asked of the two dozen onlookers behind his net at the SCG, none of whom answered in the affirmative. Moments earlier, those spectators had watched England's batting coach, Matthew Maynard, manning a bowling machine that was firing 150kmh-plus balls in the direction of Pietersen's groin, torso and head.

In the same paper Greg Baum takes a long look at Andrew Strauss.