Adam Parore: Selectors right to give Astle wakeup call

Anyone doubting the selectors wisdom in giving Nathan Astle a timely wakeup call should study the numbers.

Astle was grumpy when the selectors told him to go back to the domestic game and brush up his batting. On one level you can understand his unhappiness.

Look at his record. He's our most successful one-day batsman by a mile. But at the time John Bracewell told him to take a break, Astle had reached 30 only once in his previous eight innings.

Since getting the word, Astle's hit 90 not out, 47, 90, 2, 118 not out and 81. In that stretch he's averaging over 100. Is there a message in there somewhere?

He can't complain if he looks at the numbers objectively. The bottom line is his job is to score runs, so looking at those numbers who has he got to blame but himself for getting in that predicament?

Perhaps his anger at the selectors' decision fired him up. Perhaps it was just what was needed at the time. Whichever way you look at it, it's worked.

Astle is not the only batsman to have had a lean trot. There is a case for someone like Hamish Marshall, Peter Fulton or Jamie How - if they were in a run trough - getting the same treatment as Astle.

But there's one important difference: the selectors would look at a Marshall or Fulton and say they've got time on their side and are in the early days of their careers. Not so Astle, or Stephen Fleming, for that matter.

When assessing them, the selectors would think "in two years they'll probably have retired. Are we better to start working with the younger batsmen now?" That is, at this stage of their careers - in a perverse way and despite their records - they have fewer strikes left than a 20-year-old just on the fringes, like a Ross Taylor.

And Astle was giving them that ammunition with his lack of runs before the Christchurch ODI against the Sri Lankans. I expect Astle will be a key man in our World Cup plans for next year and I hope and expect he'll go on and get plenty more runs and view this blip as just that and get on with doing what he does best.

As for the West Indies, I watched their performance at Napier and they were pathetic. It's one thing to be beaten by a better side, having given your best effort. But it was clear they'd chucked it in long before the end, and that's disgraceful.

Brian Lara can't get here soon enough. He will make a big difference - the difference perhaps between making 230 in the first innings of the opening test, and getting 390-400. One total puts them on track for a beating; the other might be sufficient to force a draw or maybe better.

My thinking is the West Indian batting will be okay, but the bowling is poor. There is not much lateral thinking going into their cricket. They look like they're trooping out and going through the motions as individuals rather than a collective.

They have several decent support batsmen, the likes of Ramnaresh Sarwan and Shivnarine Chanderpaul, but they aren't centre stage, dominant figures. Lara is, and I'd bet that in at least one of the three tests he'll make a bundle of runs.

For the West Indies sake, you'd hope it's at Eden Park next week.

They might be best to settle for a containing, frustrating approach with the ball, the way New Zealand teams used to do it. It wasn't pretty but it was pretty effective, and at this stage that will be a huge improvement on the last couple of weeks.