What a Waste

The omission of Owais Shah from England's one-day squad last week has been quietly bugging me ever since. I had the feeling at the time that I should write something about it, but I wasn't quite sure what, as, where Shah's concerned, I can see both sides. The outstandingly innovative batting, but also the scarily erratic running and sloppy fielding.

Now Rob Smyth has done the job for me.

Some of Smyth's praise is a little too effusive for me, but the central point - that Shah has been very poorly treated by a succession of England regimes - is well made and unarguable.

The classic - and terminally wasteful - English approach of focusing on what someone can't do rather than what they can is at work here, and the feeling you're left with is that with a bit more trust Shah may have blosommed a bit more often and run with a bit more assurance.

ODI centuries by English players have been as rare as hen's teeth since Marcus Trescothick retired, and with a recent hundred under his belt Shah would, perhaps, have proved harder to drop.

He may be reflecting on those missing two runs at Centurion for a very long time.