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Taylor lets fly at Aussie selectors again

Australian Test captain Mark Taylor stepped up his attack on the national selectors on Tuesday, claiming they had hurt team morale.

On Sunday, Taylor said he was considering quitting as captain because Australian selectors favoured separate captains for Test and limited overs matches.

Taylor led Australia in the 2-1 test series loss to India and arrived home in Sydney today as Steve Waugh picked up the reins for a limited overs series.

He called for a summit between players and officials to discuss the effect of splitting up the captaincy, a move first tried in this year's domestic internationals.

"It's got to have a direct effect when the Test captain like myself is only there for half the games and Steve Waugh has to do the job for the other half,'' Taylor said today.

"He's not getting a fair share of the job and I don't think I'm getting a fair share of the job either, because it's nice to be there for every game to know how your players are going, how they're feeling injury-wise, mentally, all these sort of things come into it.''

While Waugh has appealed for the system to be given a chance, Taylor said it had already caused a different mood to enter Australian cricket. "There hasn't been quite the same feeling in the side since the split. I think that's something that may get better with time,'' he said.

"At the moment there's a lot of players that have been brought up with an era that you played for Australia in both forms of the game. Now that's changing.''

Taylor said there needed to be more talk about the two-team and two-captain policies. "The hierarchy of Australian cricket, selectors, board members and players need to have a direction and I don't think at the moment we have much direction,'' he said.

"I don't really think we all know where each other is going. I think it's time to sit down and try and plan out the future for Australian cricket.''

UNI