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Australia have tried a couple of different methods of picking eleven players to face England so far in this Ashes.

They went for the hackneyed tack of picking their best XI* players for the first test. With hindsight, I'm pretty sure they'll agree that they didn't do too badly with this approach, but at the time they thought they'd been a bit shit, so they decided to take a different approach next time.

At Adelaide, they took the "who's been taking first class wickets" approach to selection for the bowlers, and ignored the obvious holes in their batting. This brought them Ryan Harris and Doug Bollinger, in place of the hapless yet historically successful Johnson, and the bland yet basically competent Hilfenhaus.

So what's next? Pretty much everyone from Shane Warne to my dead grandma - via the likes of Nathan Hauritz for heaven's sake - has been touted to play as a batsman, bowler, wicket keeper or physiotherapist for Australia in the next test.

I'd like to recommend a much simpler method for picking the next Australian side. Twitter. Out of the best Australian players on Twitter who are still at least theoretically playing cricket, I reckon I can make an XI that might just stand a chance of beating England (who have lost stuart Broad after all). Here's how it goes:

1. Phil Hughes (@ph08) - he may have been pants against England on tour, but even with that on board he averages 50+ in test matches and first class cricket. Plus he's young enough to recover from the mental scars of being found out again by England's bowlers.
2. Ed Cowan (@eddiecowan) - I like him mostly because of the way he says "fucken unbelievable" and I've never seen him bat, but he's pretty cool, avergaes in the 50s in the last two years in Shield cricket and Jarrod says he's brilliant.
3. Damien Martyn (@dmartyn30) - this is bloody tenuous because he has pretty much retired, but he was decent enough in his time, has kept his hand in with IPL, and is as far as I'm aware the only Australian player who listens to the Sofa.
4. Uzman Khawaja (@uz_khawaja) - everyone says he's brilliant, and he seems a cheery sort. He's in
5. Geraint Jones+ (@gojones623) - I actually don't think there is a single decent, uninjured keeper in Australia, so I'm going for Aussie raised Geraint Jones. Let's face it, the guy gave the Aussies a fair amount of help last time he played down under, so maybe he can do a bit of magic for them again.
6. Steven Smith (@stevesmith49) - I genuinely think Steve Smith is an extremely talented cricketer with a good eye and an even better attitude, and after 2 tests his bowling average of just over 27 compares pretty favourably with that of a certain SK Warne at the same stage in his career.
   
7. Shane Warne* (@warne888) - the second of my three man leg spin attack. If Warne's fit enough to spend a night with the allegedly insatiable Madame Hurley, he's fit enough to bowl more than four overs on the trot. End of.
   
8. Bryce McGain (@brycemcgain18) - this guy should play just because you know he'd never give up. And because it would be cool to field a team with three leg spinners.
9. Nathan Bracken (@nbracken142) - he swings the ball and wears an alice band. These are two things I need in my Asutralian XI and if I have Bracken I get both in one player. Awesome. He hasn't played for ages but he is still only 33, and we'll ignore the fact that he's injured.
10. Trent Copeland (@copes9) - no, me neither. Suffice to say he's 24, he averages 18 in his 10 first class matches. Sadly, his season playing for Shepley CC in the 2007 Drakes Huddersfield Cricket League was distinguished by him not being among the top 20 bowlers in the league.
11. Dirk Nannes (@dirk_nannes) - don't make me justify Dirty Dirk.
    

Now, try and tell me that isn't the Asutralian XI you want to see on Thursday morning.

*Minus Hauritz of course; for the purposes of this post, let's just imagine Xavier Doherty is the best slow bowler in Australia because I can't be arsed trying to work out who might actually be a half decent spinner.