The call that prompted Greg Chappell to storm out of a selection meeting

It was the tightest call of the Laurie Sawle selection panel’s tenure. Coach and selector Bob Simpson, who died aged 89 in August, described it as the only occasion a formal vote was required to split Whitney and Rackemann. Campbell, though by far the junior of the trio, was already in. “Both men deserved the trip,” Simpson recalled in Cricket Then and Now. “I was one of two selectors who went for Whit, in my case because I believed we needed a left-hander. The other pair, however, preferred Carl. “Allan Border was still to come in and give his views on the squad’s makeup, and when he did, he said ‘Rackemann is the right choice. Whit doesn’t swing the ball’. Laurie Sawle, as chairman, promptly announced, ‘OK, that’s the way we’ll go’.” Whitney was unlucky, but the 1989 Ashes touring party would go on to hammer England 4-0. In the early 1990s, Whitney would enjoy a couple of prominent summers in the Test and ODI teams, having gained the ability to swing the ball that Border had required. Dean Jones dropped in 1992 Fifty-two Tests, 3631 runs at 46.55, and two hundreds in his past four games. Yet Deano was sensationally dropped for a young Damien Martyn and the Waugh brothers for the first Test of the 1992-93 home series against the West Indies. “About 10pm Simmo gave me a call and asked me to go to his room,” Jones, who died in 2020, wrote in My Call. “When he offered me a drink at 10pm the night before a Test match I knew the worst. “He told me I wasn’t in form, that I’d had only three hits going into the Test whereas some of the West Australians had as many as nine or 12. So I was left out of the side. I was spewing … because the reasoning behind it was so far out of my control.” Then selector John Benaud committed a whole chapter to his book Matters of Choice to the decision. It highlighted how Jones was not only short of batting at the start of the season, but that his impact on live games early in series had diminished for over two years. Add to that the fact the panel wanted to introduce Martyn, and Mark and Steve Waugh offered bowling skills that helped cover for the injury-prone fast man Bruce Reid. Some years later, Simpson suggested Jones had lost the confidence of the dressing room to build an innings when required. “He was dropped because he had moved away from technical efficiency and consequently was getting out in the most extraordinary ways,” Simpson said. “He was still scoring a few runs, but often streakily, and too often it just didn’t seem as if his brain was in the right gear. The mood in the room when he was batting was ‘which crazy way is Dean going to get out now’.” Made 12th man at the Gabba, Jones was effectively scrubbed from Test cricket when he was left out of the 1993 Ashes touring party. The young players chosen ahead of him – Martyn, Matthew Hayden and Michael Slater – went on to prolific Test careers. Matt Wade’s sledging-based recall in 2016 There were plenty of unsettling pointers to cultural issues in Australian cricket before the ball-tampering scandal in 2018, but few were more blatant than the way Matthew Wade was recalled for Peter Nevill in 2016. Australia had lost five Tests in a row, the last by a huge margin in little more than two days against South Africa in Hobart, forcing the resignation of selection chair Rod Marsh. With Hohns returned to the chair and Greg Chappell the selection panel, the next Test team featured a lot of change. But Wade’s inclusion left Chappell flummoxed, and unafraid to say so. “Suffice to say the team’s leadership felt that a change of wicketkeeper was required and Wade was the preferred candidate,” Chappell told me in 2021. “Not because he was the best wicketkeeper, but because he was the loudest gloveman with the most ‘mongrel’, whatever that means. “I stated, ‘that’s never been a criteria for picking a Test team that I’ve ever heard of, and we shouldn’t be starting that now’. As the idea developed in the meeting I just shook my head, saying ‘no, we can’t go down this path’. “I shook my head again when the decision was made, and it’s the first and only time I’ve walked out of an Australian selection meeting in total disagreement with what we’d just done.” Chappell quickly sought out Pat Howard, Cricket Australia’s then head of team performance, to state his objection. “Mate, I just need to let you know that for the first time in my life as a selector, I’ve been involved in something that I totally disagree with,” Chappell told Howard. “Every other selection meeting I’ve had my say, we’ve had a good discussion, a decision is made and we’ve all been comfortable that we’ve made the right consensus decision. We have just made the wrong decision, and it’s going to end in tears, and I need you to know that from me right now.’” Nathan Lyon out, Ashton Agar in, 2013 As captain of Australia, Michael Clarke was a resolute defender of spin bowlers, and preferred perseverance to experimentation. His loss of official selector status, following a heart-to-heart with Rod Marsh and Allan Border in India during the 2013 “Homework-gate” tour, had one instant outcome. Nathan Lyon, the young spinner about whom other selectors had held reservation for more than a year, was dropped for the start of the 2013 Ashes and replaced by the 19-year-old Ashton Agar. With a thrilling 98, batting 11 on debut at Trent Bridge, Agar made himself an instant pin-up in much the same way as Sam Konstas last summer. But the flow-on effect of his rapid elevation is still being felt. Agar played one more Test in the series at Lord’s before Lyon was recalled to a spot he would not relinquish for well over a decade. Agar never quite developed into the Test cricketer the selectors envisioned, though he became an excellent white ball player. Mike Hussey, a teammate and mentor of Agar, was an outspoken critic of the way he was quickly picked, then swiftly jettisoned. “In my opinion the whole episode was very poorly handled,” Hussey said in 2016. “The duty of care to this young Australian cricketer was pretty much ignored. “If everyone associated with making the decision to pick Ashton had just been patient and let him develop he would have held on to his youthful zeal, grown gradually in confidence, expanded his knowledge and been much better off in the long run.” Usman Khawaja dropped in 2019 Australia’s left-handed batters had huge problems in England in 2019. David Warner endured a nightmare series, Marcus Harris fared little better, and Travis Head was dropped. Usman Khawaja struggled, too, but his exit wasthe start of a three-year exile during which he essentially gave up on returning to the Test team. When Khawaja did return in January 2022, he immediately made twin hundreds at the SCG, and his subsequent run of scoring raised plenty of questions about the wisdom of culling him in 2019. “This is why I’m such a big proponent that your best players are your best players,” Khawaja says. “You go through ups and downs in form, but over time their results will be best. They may get dropped once or twice, but don’t drop them five times. “I remember coming down and JL told me. He sat down and told me face to face. I never vented as much to JL as I might have to [wife] Rach or someone else. But I don’t actually vent a lot. I just get quiet, frustrated and annoyed, sad, whatever it might be. “But in my heart I genuinely thought I’d go back home, score some runs in the Shield and be back in the team. Then when I didn’t get back, I didn’t play well that season. I had some stinking decisions, I thought ‘oh well, that’s it,’ and I came to terms with that.” News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport are sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.