Cricket Australia chief executive appears to have contradicted high performance manager Pat Howard on player rotation Source:Getty Images
The cricket boss also admitted that the coach was in some ways a scapegoat for others failings.
The controversial rotation policy has upset fans, commentators and broadcasters in recent times and its death will not be widely mourned.
Speaking to Sally Warhaft on the ABC this morning, Sutherland said players would not be brought in and out of the Test side as they have in the past.
“Looking ahead to the Ashes series that we will see in England and next summer in Australia you won’t see any of that rotation policy in the fashion that we have in the past,” he said.
“It (rotation) is about providing opportunity for players in a team that’s in transition so that selectors can give players an opportunity at international level to see how they cope with that and to respond.
The move away from resting players in Test is a significant philosophical shift. CA high performance manager Pat Howard has championed the use of sports science data and workload issues as a pre-emptive strike against injury.“For well over a decade the Australian selectors have adopted a policy of doing that particularly with one dayers and I have no doubt that will continue but certainly for Test matches we will day in day out be picking our best team.”
There was consternation last summer when bowlers Peter Siddle and Ben Hilfenhaus did not play in the series deciding third Test against South Africa in Perth.
All players must now give feedback on how they sleep and the like which contributes to a well being index and it was claimed at the time both players were “fatigued” and likely to break down, although Howard said later both had injuries.
There was further controversy when Mitchell Starc was rotated out of the Boxing Day Test.
Channel Nine managing director Jeff Browne said last week that his network, which had just paid $450m for a five-year broadcast deal, had spoken to Cricket Australia about changing the rotation policy.
"I understand why sports want to do that, but people at home want to see the best players playing and we urge Cricket Australia to pick the best players every time,” he said.
"I think we've got a better understanding on that. Last year that balance was skewed too much in favour of resting some players so from now on there will be a lot more discussion between CA and the broadcaster about that.”
Sutherland denied that the network would have any say at the selection table.
The cricket boss admitted that in some ways Arthur has been made a scapegoat for failings across the board.
“Every team in the world has issues around culture and discipline and when you are losing you are laid bare and that is one of the issues where we see a concern about the consistency of behaviour and discipline and accountability to perform hasn’t improved to the extent we would like over the last six months and that has gone hand in hand with the disappointing on field performances and we’ve arrived at the decision we have arrived at to make a change in that area,” he told the ABC.
“There’s no doubt some people will say Mickey Arthur is a scapegoat in this and to some degree he is, but realistically as head coach he needed to take responsibility for the performance of the team, but the players need to stand up here, we all do.
“The management, the support staff, the players need to respond from where we are and we are confident that with Darren (Lehmann) in charge the team will respond around him and we will see some performances that Australian cricket fans can be proud of.”
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