English selector receives OBE as 5-0 loss looms England's highly rated batsman Gary Ballance. On the eve of a potential 5-0 Ashes defeat, England's retiring chairman of selectors Geoff Miller has been awarded an OBE as part of the Queen's New Year's Honours list. Miller, who selected the England squad that is one loss away from being only the fourth team in Ashes history to lose in a whitewash, as well as playing 34 Tests as part of a 383-game first-class career, has been recognised for his services to cricket. The timing of the honour, however, is not great and is likely to draw comparisons to the MBE awarded to Paul Collingwood in the 2006 list. Collingwood was subsequently ridiculed by Shane Warne as he played in just one Test in England's 2005 Ashes triumph, making scores of seven and 10. Although Miller's six-year chairmanship of England's selection panel has ended on a bitter low, the 61-year-old has presided over an era of great success. On his watch, England climbed to the top of the world Test rankings, won three Ashes series and claimed a Twenty20 world title. England will start the year with a new cricket supremo, Paul Downton, a new chairman of selectors, James Whitaker, and possibly two fresh faces for the fifth Test starting on Friday at the SCG. Speculation is mounting the beleaguered visitors will blood uncapped duo Gary Ballance and Scott Borthwick in an attempt to salvage something from the smouldering ruins of their tour. The pair are considered bright prospects. Senior batsman Ian Bell hinted the time may have come to rejuvenate an England side that has been comprehensively outplayed this summer by Australia only months after winning 3-0 back home. Maybe we are at the start of a new journey. We have to draw a line under the team that won so much over the last five years and accept that this is a new team with several young players," Bell wrote in a column for the cricinfo website. It will take a while for the likes of Ben Stokes, Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow to gain the experience you need at this level, and learning in front of 90,000 people at the MCG is a big ask. In fact, it is as tough an environment as I have experienced. That makes it all the more important that senior players like me step up and help them. Ballance is a left-handed batsman highly rated by former England captain Michael Vaughan. The 24-year-old was unlucky not to earn a cap for the second Test after top-scoring in a tour game in Alice Springs. Should Ballance, a middle-order batsman with a first-class average of 53, get the nod, it is likely to trigger another reshuffle of England's batting order. Michael Carberry, 33, shapes as the man most likely to make way despite being England's second leading run scorer this series.