GEORGIE PARKER: Dropping Cameron Green from Australia Test team could be best move to save his cricket career

Cameron Green feels like one of those players everyone agrees will be (or should be) great ... eventually.

The problem is that Australian cricket seems determined to keep picking him until that happens, regardless of whether his current form actually justifies it.

Green isn’t in the side because he’s dominating games right now. He’s in because of what he represents. The idea of a tall, all-rounder who can bat anywhere in the top seven is intoxicating.

To be clear, that potential is still there, but potential only buys you so much time.

At the moment, it’s hard to argue that Green is contributing in a way that matches the expectations expected of him. At the crease with bat in hand he looks tentative - almost like he is someone playing not to fail rather than to succeed.

And with the ball, it’s the same story. He’s barely used, and when he is, he’s often the bowler opposition batters look to attack. That’s not a knock on his ability, his ceiling is higher than most, but it is a sign that his confidence isn’t where it needs to be, and oppositions can smell that a mile away.

And that’s the bigger issue here. Form matters, but confidence matters even more. In a sport like cricket, where one mistake can end your day, you simply cannot afford to be low on self-belief.

By continuing to pick Green while he’s clearly short on confidence, Australia risks setting him up for failure rather than helping him develop.

Right now, Green looks like a player searching for something, be it timing, rhythm or certainty, and wherever he looks, he’s not finding it.

It’s not just his bowling knocked for six, his confidence is as well.

At some point, the selectors need to step in, not to punish him, but to protect him. They need to sit him down and tell him they believe in him and their long-term vision of him, then be honest: he needs to rediscover that confidence before he’s back in the side.

You can have faith in player and not select them - they can coexist. The most instrumental moment in my career was when my coach sat me down, and told me honestly his thoughts on my form at the time and where I was at.

It was a hard conversation, but one said with care and respect for me. I knew he believed in me, but I wasn’t giving what I needed to the side, or to myself at the time.

I left that conversation with mixed feelings. Sadness that I wasn’t doing my job for the side, but with the feeling of support and that I had the ability to be a pivotal member of the side, but I just had to unlock it.

It’s a fine line I think the Australian selectors are walking on at the moment.

Confidence doesn’t come from faith alone. It comes from small wins; a solid innings, a good spell, a moment where things click again, but they’re almost impossible to find those wins when you’re constantly under the microscope.

Every sport has its version of this. Golfers talk about the putting yips. Tennis players fall into cycles of double faults and unforced errors. I had the trapping yips in hockey, a basic skill suddenly feeling foreign like I’d never held a stick before.

The instinct is always to push through it at the highest level, but that rarely works. More often, it just deepens the problem.

By continuing to pick Green while he’s clearly short on confidence, Australia risks setting him up for failure rather than helping him develop.

That’s made even more frustrating by the fact there are other options.

Not selecting a specialist spinner when there is one waiting in the wings who would balance the side, could have allowed Green to step away, and take the pressure off him.

Green’s ceiling hasn’t changed. But right now, selection based purely on what he might become is doing him no favours.

Sometimes the best way to back a player isn’t to keep picking them, it’s to give them the space to find themselves again by leaving them out of the side.