WELLINGTON - Australian batsman Simon Katich has broken his silence on his axing from the test side, describing it as one of the most disappointing and frustrating times of his career.
The left-handed West Australian was dumped from the test squad after an indifferent Ashes series and three consecutive failuresat home against the Rest of the World and the West Indies, and had successfully avoided talking about the setback for the past month.
But he opened up yesterday as the Australian one-day side practised before tomorrow night's second Chappell-Hadlee one-dayer, saying he would concentrate on performing at state level and in the shorter form of the game, and hoped to produce enough quality to persuade the selectors to look at him again.
"It's been disappointing over the past four or five months, particularly in England," he said. "Then it all built on me at the start of the summer at home.
"I've done nothing differently, that's been the most frustrating part of it. My preparation's been the same, but towards the end I lost a bit of confidence and then there wasn't any runs.
"But that's the nature of the game, so hopefully now I can go back to state cricket and play as well as I can and just keep chipping away."
Katich said the turning point for his test future came during the Super Series test at Sydney, when he was involved in a horrid mix-up between the wickets in the first innings, before being caught and bowled by Muttiah Muralitharan in the second.
"That was disappointing because I didn't do much wrong there, it all happened at the last moment," he said of the runout. "Then suddenly I found myself walking back to the pavilion."
As for New Zealand's capitulation last weekend, Katich said the Australians still had a great deal of respect for the New Zealand batting line-up, and would be taking nothing for granted at the Cake Tin tomorrow evening.
