Half the Test team spots are up for grabs. And why not? Although he made some poor selections, I do think Rod Marsh got the rough end of the pineapple from the media even though he did make a few poor selections (yes, Mitchell Marsh, Moises Henriques, Glenn Maxwell, among others). I mean, Adam Voges made 1,358 Sheffield Shield runs in 2014-15 – that’s the third highest Shield run tally in history! Why wouldn’t you have picked him? It’s not Swampy’s fault that Voges has gone off a cliff. Peter Nevill was averaging over 40 with the bat and was a better ‘keeper when he was picked over Brad Haddin in England. It was the right call. It just didn’t work out.

But now replacements must be found. Mark Waugh has more or less said that anybody with runs under their belt who scores big in the third round of the Sheffield Shield is going to get a baggy green. Peter Handscomb has, you would think, nailed the audition with 215 today against NSW.

Whoever they pick, I have just one request: make sure they have a track record of scoring red ball centuries.

Too often the selectors have picked players to bat in the top six when those players have no history of making centuries on any sort of regular basis. Shane Watson was the best – I mean worst – example of this. Watson made 4 Test tons in 109 Test innings. He was never good enough to bat in the top six in a Test match. Mitchell Marsh has made only 4 first-class centuries in 110 innings, and reached 50 only twice in 31 Test innings. Again, not good enough.

But they are gone now.

Is Callum Ferguson really the right pick? Sure, he has 15 first-class centuries in 187 innings (sort of decent but not stunning), but he only played five Shield matches in 2015-16, scoring a mere 478 runs and made just the one century. Sure, in 2014-15 he scored four centuries, but that’s two years ago now. In Voges’ fabulous year of 2014-15, he made six centuries. Chris Rogers made five centuries in 2008-9 when he scored 1,195 runs. Ferguson made a ton in the first Shield match of 2016-17 but followed that with 0, 3, 1 and 4 in his next four red ball innings (the middle two of which were in his Test debut in Hobart). I hope he works out but I’m not very optimistic.

Handscomb looks like a logical replacement for Voges. He was third on the list of highest run-scorers in the 2015-16 Shield with 784 runs at 43.56 with 3 centuries and 4 fifties. Prior to his double ton against NSW, he had scores of 78, 10 and 60. That double century was his ninth century in his 100th first-class inning. Twice as good as Mitchell Marsh, I guess. Fingers crossed.

If you look at the entire 2015-16 Shield season PLUS the first two and half games of the 2016-17 season, you have Travis Dean and Jake Lehmann with four centuries each and Matt Renshaw and Kurtis Patterson with three each.

For my money, these are the sort of names one should be looking at. They won’t all work out but unless they can score Shield tons, they won’t score Test tons.