Imagine you are Australia’s off spinner Nathan Lyon for a moment. You have made your way back into the Australian team in England after the selection of a 19 year old who had played 5 first class games for the first two tests of the Ashes failed dismally. You have just finished a test match in which you have taken 7 wickets over 42 overs and had an economy rate of 2.30 over those overs. You have snared your main tormentor in the English batting line up, Kevin Pietersen, twice in the test match as well as extracted England’s other best batters in Trott and Bell in a magical first innings spell.

If you were Nathan Lyon right now you would have cause to feel pretty happy with your lot in life (save for the pain of defeat) and you would be feeling like you had done enough to secure your place in the Australian team, again, wouldn’t you?

Then you read this quote from the Chairman of the National Selection Panel, John Inverarity, talking about Fawad Ahmed and whether he is potential starter for the return Ashes series in Australia:

“He would be in contention for that," said Inverarity."We’ll see how he goes. He played in some Shield matches at the end of the last Australian summer, bowled well and took wickets, so we’re just keen to see how he goes at international level. He and a number of other spinners will be contention as well."

Nathan Lyon, reading that over a cup of tea and some toast this morning, would have every right to spit out said tea and blow up in disgust. He has done everything asked of him in my opinion and has shown maturity and poise in what must have been a difficult situation for him. Yet he has the chairman of the Australian selection panel tell a phalanx of journalists that there are a number of spin bowlers in contention for the return Ashes series and one of them is a player with limited first class experience and is 7 years older than the incumbent.

Can anyone explain the logic to me? There once was a time when Australian cricket selectors stuck with a team and backed the players that they considered to be good enough to do the job. Nathan Lyon surely has shown that he is one such player. Unfortunately he is playing in what I have started calling the “Inverarity Era” which has proven already to be an era of instability in selection and “project players” rather sticking with a team, supporting the players in the team and actually doing an apprenticeship in first class cricket before one is put into the cauldron of test match cricket. No wonder our team looks down on confidence: they do not know whether the next test match will be their last.