Can any Australians explain why

...Phil Hughes only just made his ODI debut and has never played international T20 cricket yet has 20 test caps?

For clarity he averages nearly 53 domestically in 20 over cricket and over 50 in List A

Not Australian, but it is quite simply bizarre.

I guess its a combination of timing (in Australia the ODIs are always at the end of the season, by which point he'd been dropped from the Test side!), the fact that Australia have a number of other aggressive limited-overs openers, and simply confused selection.

Another is Andrew McDonald. He's been an excellent contributor to Leics, IPL teams and Aussie domestic one-day teams over the years. Yet his only international appearances have come in a handful of Tests, where it wasn't quite clear what his role was.

Peter Seabiscuit Wheeler wrote:...Phil Hughes only just made his ODI debut and has never played international T20 cricket yet has 20 test caps?

For clarity he averages nearly 53 domestically in 20 over cricket and over 50 in List A

Because there were question marks over his technique for dealing against the short ball whereby he kept on getting blocked off and backed away too much towards the legside.

It is strange.

England have a long history of picking players not suited necessarily to ODIs in the short format first, but the reasoning is clear: they want to test their mental (more than technical) suitability, and how they behave in a HP environment before possibly "graduating" them to what is in their opinion the highest form of cricket, namely test matches.

I think Australia probably rushed Hughes into the side a bit. He now seems a much more compact player. I'm not sure how good he is at rotating the strike, so that could be an issue in the long run in ODIs, but assuming Watson and Warner eventually return at the top there is still the number 3 slot available (Clarke IMO replaces Bailey at 4, and Bailey may eventually replace Hussey) and Hughes would definitely be in the running there.

Phil Hughes has really improved his OD game since he came to England last summer.

He was the top scored in the 40 over competition and T20 competition. He then continued his good ODI form in Australia's 50 over competition.

I'd say if he has another couple of good games, then Warner will be under the pump. His ODI record isn't that great. He's got 2 hundreds but averages 30.