Mark Ramprakash says selectors have been ‘unfair’
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Mark Ramprakash broke his silence yesterday and rounded on the England selectors for refusing to pick him.
The Surrey batsman questioned why he has been left out consistently despite being told the door was still open.
Ramprakash has scored 8,457 runs at an average of 86 over the past five seasons — a record that prompted calls for him to be reinstated for the final npower Test against Australia at the Brit Oval. The selectors chose instead to keep faith with Ian Bell and give Jonathan Trott his Test debut.
Bell and Trott justified that decision by making important runs as England regained the Ashes, but the pain of rejection is still hurting Ramprakash more than the broken thumb that ended his season a week later.
“If I’d been selected, it would have been fantastic,” said Ramprakash, 40 in three days’ time, who played the last of his 52 Tests in New Zealand in 2002. “But, in all honesty, I just didn’t see the people who mattered coming back my way.
“My friends ask me, ‘Mark, is the door still open for you?’ And I say, ‘The selectors say it is.’ But it doesn’t look that way, does it? I mean, look at the amount of runs I’ve scored in the past four or five years. I always hoped that my performances would do the talking for me so if I’m not being picked on those performances, I have to ask myself why I am not being selected.
“I think Geoff Miller [the national selector] was quoted as saying, ‘It’s the same reason we didn’t pick him two years ago — what’s changed now?’ If that’s true, it’s so unfair.
“When I was left out in 2002, it was a fine line whether I was left out or not. Also, I was 32 back then but the way I am as a person means that I’ve continued to strive, to work hard and to learn new things.