Auckland (New Zealand), Feb. 23 : New Zealand Cricket's chief selector Glenn Turner seemingly has no regard for reputations and his perform-or-else attitude has now seen 28 players tried since October.

That''s almost half of all the first-class players in New Zealand when you remove from the picture the odd overseas import and all the South Africans ineligible until they met residency criteria.

Turner, whose fellow selectors are John Wright and Dion Nash, said he was comfortable rewarding standout performers in domestic competition.

"It is too easy to say that when a player does well at provincial level, it doesn''t count - we think that it does. Also we are having quite a few injuries and we have the Twenty20 World Cup coming up in June and we only have these two matches," stuff. co. nz quoted Turner, as saying.

On his decision to omit James Franklin and Scott Styris for the two Twenty20 matches against India and to bring in journeyman Ewen Thompson, the former batting great said: "It is not a rotation policy, it is more about taking advantage of an injury situation to give someone else an opportunity. Quite often those last two positions you chose could go any number of ways."

"The argument is your core players win you games and those two final selections you make are less likely to. Therefore, by swapping them around a bit you learn more about different individuals," he added.

The axing of Franklin seems harsh to the point of bizarre because if you put him alongside Thompson as a all-round cricketer you would chose Franklin every time.

Turner said Franklin was not considered a bowling option for the Twenty20 series against India because "over a period of time he has proved a bit sporting".

He could not be squeezed into the middle order because Neil Broom was taking his opportunity and Jacob Oram was fit again.

Turner said Thompson had been recalled because a reliable new-ball bowler was needed to fill the gap created by Kyle Mills'' unavailability.

Turner''s attitude to coaching and now selecting has never been about making friends but he might take umbrage at being labelled "cold" despite the treatment of players such as Franklin and Brendon Diamanti.

On the other hand, he, Wright and Nash could point to their success stories, namely Martin Guptill, Broom and potentially Ian Butler and Nathan McCullum in the limited overs game, and Tim McIntosh in the longer form.

They had watched Styris closely and concluded that for the moment the 2007 World Cup hero did not warrant selection for the opening match in Christchurch on Wednesday.

"He starts off slowly and is committed to getting in and scoring big, but he hasn''t really yet shown out. We are talking about Twenty20. He has a better show for the 50-over stuff."

The team: Daniel Vettori (captain), Neil Broom, Ian Butler, Grant Elliott, Martin Guptill, Brendon McCullum, Nathan McCullum, Iain O''Brien, Jacob Oram, Jesse Ryder, Tim Southee, Ross Taylor, Ewen Thompson. (ANI)