I am a net cricket fan; that is, almost all the cricket I consume and discuss is internet-centered. I watch cricket on the ‘net, I talk about it on the ‘net. Thus, most of my ‘talking’ about cricket is reading and writing about it (I am excluding the half-duplex communication with television commentators). This has also meant, willy-nilly, that I have developed a style of thinking about it that is peculiar and distinct, reliant upon only partly self-conscious attempts to persuade or be persuaded by the written word.

This mode of thinking about cricket is so much a part of my makeup as a fan that I do not pay explicit attention to it. But I am reminded of its existence and its disjuncture from other ways of relating to cricket whenever I am forced to talk about cricket: when I, that is, meet another fan in the flesh and cricket, magically, enters the conversation. Perhaps I travel (earlier this month, I spent three weeks in India); perhaps other fans come traveling (this week, a good Australian friend is in town for a conference); however it works out, fans meet, pleasantries are exchanged and talk turns to the game.

At that point, I notice that my very own cricketing opinions sound strange to me; their aural form is not what I’m used to; I’m used to writing down thoughts about cricket, organising them a little, perhaps, hopefully, making them more coherent. But in their spoken form, they acquire a texture, perhaps a depth or superficiality that I might not have known they possessed. And sometimes it forces me to revise them, quickly, sometimes right there and then, and sometimes in the future, when, you guessed it, I get back to discussing cricket by writing about it.

But it is not just I that sound different; other fans sound different too. The rhetorical force of the spoken word sometimes surprises me: by far the most effective polemic I have heard made against the DRS came from my brother, who during a conversation over drinks during my trip to India, expressed himself pungently, sharply and succinctly with the spoken word and added a marvelously evocative, contemptuous, and dismissive shake of the head. I felt myself persuaded; I felt compelled to adopt a point of view I had only dimly perceived as worthy of my support.

Talking about cricket makes me eloquent too. On the same trip to India, I noticed my conversations about the game moving quickly between registers of response, sometimes between languages as I switched from English to Hindi and back, sometimes between levity and seriousness. This bilingual relationship to cricket is only possible in conversation and by being exposed and made explicit it changes my understanding of the game and its claims on me.

My status as cricketing exile means that reading and writing about cricket will continue to be my predominant mode of interaction with the game; other fans will infuriate and edify me by ‘talking’ to me via text. But, hopefully, travel and conversation will continue to inform me of another world where this game, which takes up so much of my time and attention, acquires shapes and contours distinct from those I am accustomed to.

Every time a country plays a Test Match they should pick the best 11 players available that day; potential is something you can experiment with on A Tours © Getty Images

Throughout his career, Simon Katich was a relatively low-key character. In an era where he shared the stage with players like Matthew Hayden, Adam Gilchrist, Ricky Ponting, Shane Warne, Michael Clarke and Andrew Symonds, Katich's role was always underplayed. He flew under the radar at times, churning out runs in his second coming with serene monotony, rarely drawing much attention to himself. It is ironic then that his axing from the Australian squad has attracted more public interest than many of his fine knocks. Even in his disappointment, he may yet see the bitter humour in that.

Unfairly perhaps, Katich will be remembered as a bit of a grafter, a reliable and hardy competitor, very much in the mould of the old-fashioned Australian opener of yesteryear. That image probably sells him short. His scoring-rate may have paled in comparison to Hayden (whose wouldn't?) but he ticked along at a deceptive pace. He may have lacked the power game of his genre, but the shuffle across to off stump and supple wrists meant he rarely got tied down, strong through third man and efficient behind square on the leg side. From the outside looking in, he appeared relatively unselfish, happy to sit in the slipstream of the flashier characters in his team, preferring the shadows while the big boys hogged the headlines.

Typical of his brand though, it appears that even in 'death' (in a cricketing sense), his passing will morph into a debate that renders him an innocent bystander. Like in many of his big opening partnerships with Shane Watson and Hayden, Katich is almost forgotten in the post-mortem. This time too, this issue has become more of a forum to discuss Andrew Hilditch's (and to a lesser extent Greg Chappell's) performance as chief selector. Katich, the original victim has almost become the forgotten road-kill in the bigger debate around Hilditch's future. "What about me?" poor old Kato must cry. “Forget Hilditch's career – I'm the one without a contract!”

Clearly the selectors have made a decision based on the long-term future of Australian cricket, but they've tried to balance that to some extent by not reverting to a wholesale youth policy. Otherwise, based on form and age alone, one could argue that Ponting, Hussey and Clarke might also have been cut from Test cricket calculations, their numbers in recent years no better than Katich. For one of the 'greats' like Ponting though, he probably deserves more than to be compared against anyone. His record allows him the dignity of being judged on a different spreadsheet to the other foot soldiers.

When it comes to Test cricket especially, I'd like to know whether sensible cricket followers, not just Australian fans, agree with the notion of fielding a First XI based on potential rather than the team being the best 11 cricketers in the land on the day. I've always leaned towards the notion that every time a country plays a Test Match they should pick the best 11 players available that day. To me, Test cricket is still the ultimate honour and being selected to play for your country is a special privilege. Regardless of age, pick the best team you can. Potential is something you can experiment with on A Tours and in first-class cricket but it's a bit like marriage to me – you might date lots of girls throughout your life but hopefully you decide to marry that very special person who means the most to you. It's not a trial run and it's not a reward for someone who may just prove to later become the love of your life – I feel similarly about Test cricket.

If you subscribe to that theory, then Katich is entitled to feel miffed to not even feature in the list of 25 contracted players. If you're not going to pick the best Test team on any given day, does it not devalue that spine-tingling boyhood dream of playing Test cricket for your country? If we're picking teams purely on potential, looking to the future, where do we draw the line then? Should we pick the entire Under-19 team, based on the logic that they will one day realise their potential? When they finally reach their potential, should we then dispense with them and pick the next generation of youngsters, recycling that same theory about always picking on potential? I think Test cricket should be the ultimate reward for realising potential, regardless of age. Anything else is tantamount to unfair discrimination.

Sure, the real answer probably lies somewhere in between, where commonsense and idealism meet. The danger, though, with Australia's preoccupation with finding an opening partnership in time for the next Ashes series, is that it unintentionally insults every other team it encounters along the way. There's no doubting that the Ashes hold a special place in Australian cricket's priorities, but I still think that we owe it to our proud tradition to put out the best possible team in every Test we play, against Sri Lanka, South Africa or Bangladesh. Let the next generation show us what they've got in the warm-up games and A Tours, but let's reserve that baggy green cap for the best 11 cricketers available for selection on that particular day. To me, that's the only way Test cricket will maintain its special place in the hearts of cricketers, in an era where ODI and T20 games are played today and forgotten tomorrow.

Just ask players like Jamie Siddons, Stuart Law, Wade Seccombe and Martin Love about what that baggy green cap really meant to them. Fabulous cricketers all of them, but they never got picked on potential. If they couldn't force their way into the First XI, they missed out. That was always the Australian way. We pride ourselves on picking the best team and then finding a captain from among that lot, unlike England who had a long history of selecting a captain who wouldn't necessarily have made the team on form alone.

Will Katich get selected from outside the squad? I doubt it. Yet, if the selectors were fair, they should just ask this question of themselves. If Katich was fit and scoring runs, would he be in the team today, regardless of next month, next year or the next Ashes series? The baggy green cap deserves that respect.

Hoping for a hat-trick of centuries at Lord's © Associated Press

The best sort of cricket match to watch is one which your team wins and your favourite player on the other side gets a hundred or a five-for. I am therefore hoping that Lord's will bring another England win and another century for Mahela Jayawardene.

I can't say that I noticed him on his first visit to England in 1998. Sri Lanka only played the one Test, in which Muttiah Muralitharan and Sanath Jayasuriya were so dazzling that a 21-year-old with no record who scored very few passed under the radar.

But when England went to Sri Lanka a couple of years later, it was very different. In the first Test at Galle Jayawardene came in at 5 to join Marvan Atapattu, who was on his way to a double hundred, following the dismissal of Aravinda de Silva for a typically stylish hundred of his own. In such a healthy position, he obviously had a bit of licence to play his shots, which he proceeded to do – and I was captivated.

Such economy of movement, such timing, such precision, such delicacy. A Swiss watchmaker would have been very proud to have constructed a mechanism which functioned so perfectly.

He did even better in the second Test at Kandy. Sri Lanka were in a bit of trouble at 80-4 when he was joined by Russel Arnold, who had the sense to keep his head down and keep his end going while Jayawardene set about the bowling. Wiseacres might have called it irresponsible, but he had resolved to counter-attack – and it worked. No-one could bowl to him as he scampered to a brilliant three-hour hundred. So pleased was he with reaching three figures that he fatally lost concentration and was out almost immediately, but I was now prepared to predict a very bright future for him.

Not realising how long Sachin Tendulkar would go on, I thought Mahela would succeed Sachin as the best batsman around, and I looked forward to his visit to England in 2002.

In the first Test at Lord's, he twinkled his way to a ton in the sunshine, with Marvan Atapattu again playing straight man on his way to another huge score. Mahela was at his entertaining best, playing beautiful wristy shots off all and sundry. Atapattu's 185 was a larger part of the Lankan's imposing 555, and Aravinda de Silva's 88 was typical of the man, but it was Mahela's champagne-style innings which captured the heart as well as the eye. It was probably at this point that the career trajectories of de Silva and Jayawardene crossed; from there on, Mahela became Sri Lanka's marquee batsman as Aravinda gradually faded.

But there was a slight suspicion that he was a froth player: he wasn't then well-known for being able to put his head down and graft when the going got tough. Things could not have been much tougher, though, when he came out to bat at Lord's in the second innings in 2006. Sri Lanka were 250 behind in their follow-on with more than two days remaining; it was going to take something quite heroic to pull the game out of the fire, and captain Jayawardene produced it. His patient hundred took up day four in as boring a way as he could manage. Which isn't all that boring: his impregnability meant that he did not wave that magic wand of a bat as often but when he did, the crystal flash lit up the gloomy grey.

Although it depends on what the next Future Tours Programme comes up with, it is very likely that this will be Mahela's last Test tour of England, which means that Lord's will be my last chance to see him bat in a Test. I don't care in what manner he gets it - he is one of those batsmen who cannot play a horrid innings whatever he does – but I really hope he can complete a hat-trick of centuries at HQ so I can stand and applaud him while wishing him farewell. I'd just rather he didn't end up on the winning side.