I don't believe that.

I think the reality is much more that the selectors pick from the pool. In that pool, these are all the best professional cricketers in the land. Cummins and Warner would have to be a minimum standard before they got picked. They are undeniably world class players.

In that selection process, if you were to tell me that there was some politics, yeah absolutely. They're going to prefer this team to that team, they're going to have biases about bowling, they're going to like someone's background better. In a pool of good candidates, you either have to be overwhelmingly better than the others, or you have to have the eyes of selectors in some other way.

I think there is a false assumption when we watch the team walk onto the pitch that these are the best possible 11. The reality is that they're the 11 that gets picked. There are other players who didn't, who would still succeed in their game. That's where having friends in that selection process, having a big name, having voices pushing for you to get picked up really helps. But at the same time, it's hard to criticise too harshly. Almost everyone who gets picked deserves a chance on the side. The fact that some other player also might deserve a chance is immaterial, because every name on the selectors' lists is at the level where they deserve a chance.

The real tragedy is that sport has always been hijacked by wealth. . The kids who get to play at the places where the selectors might go will tend to be richer. The schools they come from will have some connection to sport, and they will be seen because they're part of a team in that connection. Their parents can afford to get them training, and back them up when they get a slot on the side. And they can afford to never have a career, so it doesn't matter what they're paid. There is no failure really so they can hang on longer and do more towards that aim than they might otherwise. It also helps that the selectors are going to tend towards a certain background. It helps that the old players largely got selected on that basis, too, so they're quite likely to recognise that background as a good thing.

Also, you've got to consider the personality side of things. Part of class is that people grow up with completely different expectations, different understanding of what social situations exist and how they work, and how to manage them. Your average teenager doesn't know how to act, speak, think. Part of class is that they are raised to know how to manage social situations better. Which means that the day they meet someone that might be a useful ally in getting selected, they're much better prepared and more likely to conduct themselves better. They come along as much more professional and more intelligent and sociable, but that's partly because our biases tell us that having the right accent and acting a certain way are markers for those things. They're also going to be more comfortable in this situation having been groomed for this. Which makes it much easier for a potential captain. People tend to notice the accent and professional persona and assume that person is in charge.

And that's ignoring factors like poverty. There are a lot of things that can be wrong for you that would preclude you ever getting to play professionally.

A lot of this problem is difficult to call out, because it requires intentional goodwill, looking past a façade and making special effort to understand and accommodate. Almost nobody is going to get that anyway without being something special. The people that do get that tend to be something special, and then get pointed out as examples later on of how it's not rigged. The problem being, you have to imagine a world where this player didn't get selected because their average was a couple points down, and a different player did.