Test players picked from anywhere, White believes

Cameron White, the Australian Twenty20 captain, says the rapid promotion of Nathan Lyon to tour Sri Lanka next month suggests the national selectors are employing an open door policy for the Test side, irrespective of the format a player makes his name in.Lyon's selection, having played only four first-class matches and a handful of T20 and limited overs matches for South Australia last summer, has illustrated how far the national panel is prepared to look in its pursuit of "champion" players.White certainly sounded bemused when questioned on what Lyon's selection, alongside Michael Beer and Trent Copeland, signified for the rest of Australia's cricketers.He concluded that it now meant that a player could be plucked from T20s to play Tests or Sheffield Shield cricket to play T20, as talent identifiers ceased to discriminate between formats and disciplines."Very interesting question. It is a tough one for me to answer," White told reporters in Brisbane before the T20 squad flew out for Sri Lanka. "I guess if you are in the right place at the right time you can be picked."If you are in form and the selectors view that you are the right man for the job they can pick you. It seems as though the door is open for everyone in first-class cricket, one day cricket, and Twenty20 cricket to play Test cricket, if that makes any sense."Both Andrew Hilditch, the chairman of selectors, and Greg Chappell, the national talent manager and selector, have stated that their present policy is to cast around widely in the hope that certain players will show immediate signs of becoming top class performers. It is an approach laced with risk and uncertainty, and far removed from that employed by the national panel when Australia was last struggling so markedly in the mid-1980s.At that time the selectors identified a group of players with talent to support the captaincy of Allan Border, and largely stuck by them until results began to improve. The likes of Steve Waugh, Dean Jones, Merv Hughes, Geoff Marsh, David Boon and Craig McDermott emerged as the nucleus of a strong Australian side, that later became great when younger talent was introduced to a stable dressing room."We're picking the best team for Australia," Hilditch said when announcing the Test squad in Adelaide. "But we need some experienced players, which we think we have got, and we also need to find a couple of new champions in the next couple of years."Australia's coach, Tim Nielsen, is not a selector, but he defended the scatter-gun ways of the panel, which is under heavy scrutiny as part of the Don Argus-led Australian team performance review. The review is due to table its findings to the Cricket Australia board at its next meeting on August 18-19.