On Tuesday in Sydney, Hilton Cartwright from Zimbabwe via Perth becomes the 450th Australian cricketer to receive a baggy green cap. In olden times, it was different: New South Wales selectors picked the Australian team for the Sydney Test match, and many of the favoured few only had to trundle across Moore Park Road from the Paddington club.
Interstaters say that things haven't changed a lot, but either way, less travel was involved.........
Even by cricketing standards, the Australian Test club is a most select group: 676 have played for England over the same 140 years. And yet, as Australia fine-tunes its selections and finds a new horse for every course, with Cartwright's the seventh head fitted for a new cap since August, the question has been asked whether these caps are handed out too frequently, if not too easily.
Analysis shows that, as with most of cricket's most vehement arguments, the theory of the declining value of the baggy green is sort of true if looked at from a particular angle....?
