Let’s be honest, we cricket fans have all had a whinge about the selectors from time to time. In the aftermath of the Ashes loss in England, the knives are out for a lot of people, including Rod Marsh and his team.

I think that’s unjustified. The selectors did a pretty good job on this Ashes tour, and do not deserve much of the criticism they’ve received.

“I’m just racking my brain to try and think of who else we could have picked,” Marsh has said.

He’s right.

There really wasn’t anybody else who genuinely justified selection. There were good reasons to pick each member of the Ashes squad with the exception of Shane Watson and Shaun Marsh. These two players have a long track record of underperformance and inconsistency at Test level. Neither player has the skill or mental aptitude for Test cricket, and both have spent years demonstrating that.

But the truth is it would not have mattered much.

Neither Watson nor Shaun Marsh was responsible for the loss of the Ashes. I’m sure you could point fingers at more than these three, but Steve Smith, Michael Clarke and Adam Voges were primarily responsible for the series loss due to their inability to score runs at Edgbaston and Trent Bridge. Yes, Johnson, Starc and Hazlewood certainly could have bowled a better line and length, but they were always defending low totals. The main problem was the middle order batting.

Generally, selectors pick players who have been making runs and taking wickets. They did that.

The veterans in the squad such as Clarke and Brad Haddin had good track records, and although their runs had been drying up, Clarke made 128 against India as recently as December. Chris Rogers, David Warner and Smith all played well prior to the Ashes. Voges averaged over 100 last season in the Sheffield Shield and has a long and impressive first class career – why wouldn’t you pick him? After the World Cup, you couldn’t go past Mitchell Starc, and you’d pick Mitchell Johnson on the strength of the 2013-14 Ashes series even if the guy hadn’t rolled his arm over since. Josh Hazlewood was very impressive in his early career, and Nathan Lyon only gets better and better.

True, the Mitchell Marsh experiment didn’t work out, but he was worth a shot. Given Watson’s extended run of poor form, it was a well worth giving Mitchell Marsh a chance after Cardiff. He is definitely not a Test No. 6 batsman, but at 23 he has time on his side, and should be sent back to the Sheffield Shield to make some runs. Marsh is not the first young player to be thrown into the cauldron a little bit too early (Steve Smith was woeful when first he played Test cricket), and he has enormous potential.

Moreover, I give the selectors great kudos for swapping Haddin for Peter Nevill after Cardiff, and am pretty sick and tired of ex-players stirring the pot and whingeing that the ‘family first’ policy should have ensured a game for Haddin at Lord’s. Nevill was a better bet than Haddin, and the selectors made a tough call. They deserve more credit for it.

Oh, and the idea that Peter Siddle should have played at Trent Bridge? C’mon…. It wouldn’t have made any difference. The sad, brutal truth is that Sidds is now only a back-up bowler who would probably not have been in the squad at all if James Pattinson and Pat Cummins were fit and had enough recent red ball cricket under their belts. It’s a cruel statement, but fair. Siddle is down on pace and not the force he once was. The selectors know this. They were right to omit him.

Darren Lehmann has said that swapping out Mitchell Marsh for his brother Shaun in the Fourth Test was a selection error, but again, this selection made little difference to the series result. As mentioned above, Shaun Marsh has been nothing but a disappointment at Test level and should never have been in the squad, but ultimately the series was slipping away by the time he was called up and it would not have mattered which Marsh was selected.

So in my view, Watson and Shaun Marsh are the two black marks against the selectors, but they earn one back for the replacement of Haddin with Nevill. Moreover, they shouldn’t be pilloried for picking either Mitchell Marsh or Voges.

And should any of the up-and-comers have been picked? Joe Burns, Cameron Bancroft and Usman Khawaja are having a good tour of India with Australia A this month, and all three stand a chance of achieving (or regaining) a Test place in coming months. But were they battering down the selectors’ door before the Ashes tour? Not really.

Pat Howard, the performance manager of the Australian team, has gone on record blaming himself for (among other things) trying to prepare Ryan Harris for the series, picking a ‘Dad’s Army’ team and having the selectors announce one touring party for both the West Indies and England.

It’s very noble of Howard to accept blame for the loss of the Ashes, but I struggle to see how any of his alleged transgressions were responsible.

As I’ve noted before (see my earlier post ‘Mythbusting’), Harris was always unlikely to be ready to play. Even if he did play, he was 18 months older than in the previous Ashes series and there was no guarantee he would have been anywhere as effective. Suggestions that Australia ‘missed’ Harris are misguided. Australia might have missed the bowler Harris used to be, but he probably would not have been that bowler in the current series anyway.

As for Howard’s reference to ‘Dad’s Army’, I’m not sure what he’s referring to (but mind you, I don’t what his job entails anyway). It was the selectors’ job to pick the side, not Howard’s, and as I’ve opined above, they did a decent job. I’m not sure exactly what Howard is accepting blame for.

Finally, Australia flew straight from the West Indies to England. At no point between the two series was there sufficient time for other Australians to play enough first-class cricket to impress the selectors. So even if the selectors had decided to pick an entirely new squad for the Ashes at the end of the West Indies series, who would they have chosen other than the players they already had?

Howard has said he welcomes any review of his position. Great – perhaps we’ll find out what he actually does and why it matters.

In the meantime, I think the critics should lay off the selectors. They’re doing okay.