I knew I wasn’t going to be in the Ashes squad: Patterson

SYDNEY: Young Australia batsman Kurtis Patterson has said that he knew he wasn’t going to be a part of their Ashes squad.

Patterson holds a dubious honour of having been dropped after scoring a Test century. He scored 114 against Sri Lanka in Canberra in February but did not make the Ashes squad. And neither did his team-mate from that match, Joe Burns, who made 180.

A lot had changed by the time Australia’s Ashes squad was named at a Southampton hotel in late July, most notably the returns of David Warner and Steven Smith, which meant what happened five months previously didn’t count for much.

Patterson missed his chance to stake a claim during the Australia A tour and the inter-squad selection trial that was played at the Ageas Bowl. Across five red-ball innings on the tour he made 2, 32, 38, 2 and 0. But Patterson felt it was the two unconverted 30s against England Lions which were his big missed opportunity. When he was called in to meet national selector Trevor Hohns, he knew what was coming.

“To be honest, I kind of knew at the end of the third game,” he told ESPNcricinfo ahead of the new Sheffield Shield season. “I knew I wasn’t going to be in the squad, of course you always hold out a little bit of hope, but the logical person inside me knew I wasn’t going to get picked, which probably made it a little bit easier.”

That does not mean there wasn’t regret or disappointment having worked so hard to earn a debut against Sri Lanka and follow that with the cherished century.

“The selectors were after blokes who were in form and unfortunately I couldn’t put that together,” he said.

“Of course that was frustrating, it always is when you feel like you are doing well - and I did feel like I was batting well but couldn’t quite convert - but at the end of the day that was a three-week period which, in the grand scheme of things, will happen in my career.”