Kiwi selector Turner turns the heat on players

Wellington (New Zealand), Mar.15 (ANI): Glenn Turner, the New Zealand Cricket's chief selector, has turnedthe heat on the players, asking them to perform, or they will be shown the door.

The revolving door is spinning fast enough to generate a hurricane, but national selection panel spokesman Glenn Turner defends the bowling rotation saying it's a matter of picking players when they are in form and ditching them when they waver.

Southee, for instance, has been put out to State Championship pastures on the back of the mauling he suffered at the hands of the Indian batsmen in the one-dayers last week.

"If you're playing against top opposition and you're not at your best you get brutally exposed," Turner said.

"Tim Southee has a great future, so the question is do you give time now to go back to State cricket and find form or do you throw him back in there and potentially rub salt into his wounds? I believe that no matter how good you are, if you're not in good form you won't perform," The Sunday Star quoted Turner, as saying.

Turner advocates the return to a lower level (which has also been inflicted on Martin and Mills this season), because it lets a bowler work on technical elements and keep his workload up.

The current selection panel also advocates giving players a chance at international level in order to find out if they can cope.

"There are a number of players who, given the same opportunity as the incumbents, will do equally as well if not better," Turner said.

"But you don't know until you try them and no one can say they actually know whether someone will succeed or not," he adds.

Turner says being prepared to discard out-of-form players and use untried men also sends a signal to the next tier of players that there are chances to make it if they work hard at their game.

"We need to show that it's not a closed shop, that it's not an old boys network, that it's not incumbency-driven. You want players coming through to see there are opportunities if they perform," he said. (ANI)