Are England's Selectors Watching Enough Cricket?

After Steve Harmison's recall to the England side for the dead rubber test match against South Africa, after weeks of consistent top-class bowling for his home county Durham, it seems the selectors missed out on his bowling when the series was still available to England.

Since January 2008, following the Schofield Report into England's team performance and workings, England have employed a four-man selection panel. This panel is headed by Geoff Miller, a selector under David Graveney's rule. Miller's role as full-time selector would presumably mean during the English summer that he travels around the county grounds watching players, and how they manage against different type of players.

I have no doubt that this is what Miller is doing, the question is, what help is the former England, Derbyshire, and Essex off-spinner getting?

The main support must surely come from James Whitaker, the former Leicestershire batsmen, as he is the only selector without another role.

Whitaker is a part-time selector, meaning that he is does not go on away tours like Miller does. The two-time County Championship winning captain surely has the experience to be useful as a selector and presumably has the time to travel the country looking for the best talent available.

Now the problems with the selectors role comes in, with the third selector being coach Peter Moores. The obvious problem with having Moores as a selector is that he is constantly with the England sqaud. Obviously it is useful to have the coach on the selection committee to get the view of what he and his captain wants to ensure that the captain gets the players he can work with.

With this said, Moores will undoubtedly have very little time available to watch the domestic game to see where the next young star is coming from, or where the replacement for his injured and out-of-form players will be plucked from. This may be where the Darren Pattinson debacle occurred from.

The final selector is Ashley Giles. I like the idea of having a recently retired international player on the selection committee, as Giles will have the best idea of what is needed to make it at the highest level.

However, the former left-arm spinner has taken up the post of Warwickshire's director of cricket. Combining both these roles just seems absurd to me. Most of the part-time selectors time must surely be taken up coaching his side and that will mean that Giles can only watch Warwickshire and their opponents.

With Warwickshire being in the Second Division of the County Championship, surely the players that Giles is watching on a daily basis will not be good enough for England.

This leads me to wonder how much of Sky's tv coverage of county cricket is being watched by the selectors and how much the use of scorecards is taken into account.

Ravi Bopara could well be a fine example of this. His double hundred in a one-day game on the face of it is a fantastic effort, but when you consider that it was against a weak Leicestershire bowling attack, the feat does look slightly less impressive (not to take anything away from Bopara as scoring a double hundred is a fantastic effort in any form of the game).

Now it would seem following his desperate tour of Sri Lanka and disappointing average of 27 in one day cricket that it is no surprise that he was left out of the final 11 for the last test against South Africa.

Surely more cricket must be watched by the selectors, but with only two members of the team available for traveling freely, it's no wonder that the selectors missed the form of Harmison and ended up with Darren Pattinson, though he does have excellent stats in his short career.

Maybe it's also why there was such a debate as to who should replace Michael Vaughan, with Stuart Broad finally being the man to fill the gap left by the former England captain.