Discussion: I used to laugh at how you ...

I used to laugh at how you would never see Kevin Pietersen’s name in the Aussie press without the prefix ‘South African born’, but strangely I don’t see the same treatment for Labuschagne...

With KP you needed the added explanation for how much of an asshole he was. ;)

Was??

KP didn't play for Australia though so we're in no hurry to claim him as one of our own.

Incidentally Tash is very upset at how the commentators butcher the pronunciation of Labuschagne.

I don't know Juffy - KP's assessment of Brisbane is pretty accurate, don't you think? :-)

One of the sub-threads in the comments thread to the Guardian's nomination of a Test XI of the 2010s was a W**kers XI of the 2010s. KP featured prominently in discussions (as did Dave Warner), although it was hard to argue with the nomination of Salman Butt as captain - after all, he managed to actually get himself sent to jail for a cricketing offence (spot-fixing).

(It must be said that Dave Warner is the only international men's player I've ever spoken with in person, and was perfectly pleasant then).

Surely we're allowed one non-Australian born player? :-) The poms currently have a West Indian, a Kiwi, a Zimbabwean (whose brother is in their T20 side), and their ODI side is captained by an Irishman!

Tbh Australia should have at least 3 non-Australian born players if the team was representative of the population

Which raises the interesting point that most non-Anglo-Saxon nationalities are underrepresented in high-level cricket in Australia (not that orienteering is exactly in a position to throw stones from that particular glasshouse). In particular, Melbourne's large populations of Indian and Sri Lankan origin, who have a very large presence in grassroots-level cricket, have yet to produce a single player for Victoria (let alone Australia) to my knowledge.

Only Dav Whatmore comes to mind but he was born in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon)

Well hopefully political correctness doesn't pervade the national cricket team and players are selected on merit rather than some need to have the "correct" mix of people.

Look at the A League - we don't care where you were born, as long as you can play the game!

Not political correctness, but it seems strange to me that there's a large potential pool of talent that isn't being tapped into to any significant extent.

Well they're certainly tapping them in the BBL - two hat-tricks in one day from two import players.