Selection for ‘B team’ is an insult disguised as an honour

Jun 23 2009 by Luke Edwards, The Journal

Durham have every right to be unhappy at the way Stephen Harmison and Graham Onions have been treated. Chief Sports Reporter Luke Edwards looks at a bewildering decision by England’s selectors

IF Stephen Harmison and Graham Onions are being kept sweet by the England selectors with a call-up to play for the England Lions against Australia next week, it is Durham who are left with the bitter taste in their mouth.

The terrible twosome have taken 70 wickets between them in six county championship games this season, firepower which has blasted Durham to the top of the table after three crushing victories over Hampshire, Lancashire and Warwickshire.

They are, without doubt, the in-form strike bowlers in the country, accurate, hostile and prolific, yet are deemed to only be good enough to play for a side which, despite its fancy re-branding as the England Lions, is nothing more than a B Team.

Onions may have fared a little better and has been included in a 16-man training squad, but like Harmison he has been relegated to play for the Lions team in a warm up against Australia next week rather than England’s final preparation match against Warwickshire.

Having won the Ashes in 2005 with arguably the best seam attack this country has seen in decades, England’s selection of Monty Panesar and Graeme Swann suggests they believe it will be spin which proves to be Australia’s downfall four years later.

Durham would have been proud to see one of their home grown fast bowlers representing England in the Ashes. Should two of the pace men they have nurtured and ripened in the sunshine this season been involved they would have been delighted.

The defence of the county championship is Durham’s main ambition, but the need for the collective good does not undermine the pursuit of individual glory at the Riverside. However, to see both Harmison and Onions plucked off the county branch by the selectors to play in a largely meaningless warm-up game is an insult masquerading as an honour.

“It is frustrating, of course it is, but you come to expect it when you have players in or on the periphery of the national side,” said Durham head coach Geoff Cook, the mask of diplomacy just about remaining intact.

“When you are making plans for the season you have to take things like this into consideration and act accordingly with the players you have in the squad. If you look at Paul Collingwood, for example, we have hardly seen him for the last five years. As far as Graham Onions is concerned this is an opportunity for him to show what he can do against top players and prove he can take wickets when he comes up against top quality opposition.