Selectors are a strange lot, doing the strange job of looking into the future armed with little more than scorecards, instinct, and the knowledge that whatever they do will be dissected by players former, current, aspiring, and people who last held a bat at a school picnic. Theirs is a peculiar role: invisible when successful, infamous when not. There are always those with an unshakeable faith in the man who is not selected.

The selectors’ job is to pick winning teams, which sounds simultaneously obvious and odd. Winning is the final justification for any team picked on any criterion, from performance to politics. The World Cup is for winning, not building for the future or playing fantastic cricket without a trophy to show for it. Cricket, which for generations emphasised the process over the result, now has a format where the result alone matters.

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