yuppie wrote:Surely there is someone in this Scotland team that can be fast tracked into the England team. Didn't that happen with Gavin Hamilton.
No, it was actually the opposite Yuppie. I think Hamilton refused calls up for Scotland in his younger days because a lot of the English selectors really rated him, and he was widely believed to be called up at various stages before the WC in 1999, before he eventually was left out the squad to manys suprise, and at the last minute finally accepted his Scotland call up. May have been him who scored a nifty unbeaten 30 odd vs Australia in the groups.
He got capped the first tour match after for England, and had one of the worst debuts of all time. Think he had a golden duck, another duck to complete his pair, and on a deck South Africa had made look like a minefield, returned a chanceless 0/80 odd. And that was it, we never saw him again. The rumours were that with Fletcher taking over, he had picked a lot of guys that came from left field and had taken Hamilton as one of the few old guard picks without really wanting him to be there. If one test could destroy a career though, it was for Hamilton. I think before he was capped his county bat average was in the 35-40 zone, but he got out hopelessly to two innocuous bouncers, and after that teams bowled short to him, and he went full Stuart Broad. Turned out to short pitched stuff he was no better than a proper tailender, and his batting faded to nothing.
Think he still bowled well for much of his career. But was very easy paced, and only really thrived on green trundler decks that Headingley and CLS traditionally threw up