Warne slams spinner omission

Warne: staggered by the omission of Hauritz

Related links

Teams

• Australia

Also see

• Ashes experts
• Scores
• Watch live on Sky Player
• Top Tens
• Betting

Shane Warne insists Australia paid the price for omitting Nathan Hauritz as they lost the Ashes following a comprehensive 197-run defeat at The Oval.

England romped to victory with more than a day to spare on Sunday with their specialist spinner Graeme Swann playing a leading role by taking eight wickets in the match.

By contrast, Australia opted to not to recall Hauritz for the showdown, sticking instead with the four-man pace attack that had bowled them to victory at Headingley to tie the series.

It proved a mistake on an Oval pitch that turned sharply from an early stage and Warne has subsequently labelled the decision as "staggering".

"There is bound to be a lot more talk about why Australia did not choose Nathan Hauritz," Australia's leading wicket-taker Warne wrote in his column in The Times. "Personally, I have to say that I was staggered by the decision.

"I would always want to have a spinner in the side for variety's sake, but I think this time Australia simply misread the pitch.

"I do not know who had the final say on selection, whether it was the selectors themselves, or Ricky (Ponting), or what degree of input came from Tim Nielsen, the coach.

Mistakes

"We all make mistakes and somebody, somewhere, will have to take the blame for this one.

"Regardless of that, I am sure that after an hour's play on Thursday, if not earlier, Ricky would have been thinking to himself at slip: 'I could have used Hauritz here.'

"I've said all along Hauritz and Graeme Swann are pretty similar bowlers, and we saw how successful Swann was with his eight wickets in the match."

Warne added that he felt the Oval pitch was an "ordinary" Test strip, but stressed that Australia could have few complaints about the final outcome of the match.

Ordinary

"The pitch wasn't a minefield, but it was ordinary," he continued. "I am not making a big thing about it, because it produced some decent cricket.

"Other than Australia's mad couple of hours in the first innings (when they were bowled out for 160), the scores were not that low.

"In a way, you could say that it was a typical Oval wicket - except the first day was more like your normal day four.

"I do not believe that it was doctored in favour of England. It is not as though they picked two spinners, and they couldn't have known that Hauritz would be left out.

"If Ricky had called correctly and batted first, things probably would have been different. England had to win and effectively they gambled fifty-fifty on getting the opportunity to put runs on the board first time."