Skeptics,
Lost in the frenzy of Grand Final Fever last week, the faceless men on the Australian Cricket Board, in their infinite wisdom, decided to appoint, not one, but two Vice-Captains for the upcoming test matches in the desert.Unprecedented, alright. Never before in the history of the world has Straya had two Vice-Captains.
Hazo and one of the too many Marsh Bros. got the nod to take up the Poisoned Chalice, after going through a rigorous and exhaustive selection process which included submitting a job application and then being interviewed by a seven-man panel of luminaries consisting of GS Chappell MBE, MA Taylor AO, JL Langer AM, TV Hohns, the "sub-standard" Chairman of the Board, Mr David Peever Sir, the "high performance manager" Pat Howard - who's never played a game of cricket in his life - and "Cricket Australia psychologist", Dr Michael Lloyd.
Lord, save me.
Cricket Australia employs a trick cyclist? Well, blow me down. Did they do a psychometric test on the applicants?
Fat lot of good that's done them. Doc Lloyd obviously didn't make the right reading of the minds of Smiffy, Burbs, or the hapless Barmy Bancroft viz-a-viz what kind of mad-dog devil got into their heads what made them done it.
Had no idea. No inkling that their brain-boxes had been so done in by the Kaffir Kickers that they were compelled be evil incarnate to go down to a hardware shop for some sheets of fine grain sandpaper for a few Rand.
Useless.
How the hell did that superlative hanger-on, Paddy Howard, keep his job, when he should have gone straight out the back door with Boof, without so much as a sausage?
Not much "performance" there, you'd think, eh, Paddy?
Thought they were making a clean break with the past? You were wrong. Dead wrong.
Howard must have FIGJAM Watto's negatives of photo's of the selectors.
Gone a bit off track here, as usual, but back to the point - what is the point of having two Vice-Captains? What is the point of having a Vice-Captain at all? Pakistan, for example, has never seen the need to have one, and don't bother, as they go through Captains with alarming regularity as it is.
The Laws of Cricket make important mention of the "Captain", but they are silent on the subject of "Vice-Captain".Under the Laws, if a Captain needs to leave the field of play to strain the potatoes or chug a quick nerve-settling gin & tonic, any old Joe Blow can be Acting Captain, just a long as there is one on the field at all times.
One thing is for certain, Pup would never have had any truck with the concept of a dual vice-captaincy back in his day - as far as he was concerned you can leave Captaincy by Committee up to the Poms, who have a long and proud history of including clapped-out former Captains' in their sides - just ask Nasser Hussain [remember him?], Freddy Flintoff, Athers, Big Daddy KP, the Cookie Monster etc etc etc, who all played on after resigning the Captaincy, but somehow, never assumed the Vice-Captaincy.
That's not the way leadership has worked Down Under over the eons, but now there's two deputy dogs each rattling the chain and champing at the bit.
What on earth is this all about? Beats me.
This nonsense about "leadership teams" [an oxymoron in itself] is finally falling out of favour in other codes - Co-Captains used to be all the rage in football teams, but no more, as they came to the obvious conclusion that no-one knew who was actually in charge. Cricket, in the meantime, goes backwards.
So, now no-one knows who's 2IC anymore and you'd love to see the Job Description, Essential Qualifications and Key Performance Indicators of an Australian Cricket Co-Vice Captain, in the unlikely event that there are any.
No one appears to have asked TD Paine what he thinks about it, now having two subordinates snapping at his heels. What if he's forced from the field for any reason, or embroiled in some imbroglio? Are Hazo and Swampy meant to put their hands up like good boys and say "pick me! pick me!". Smacks of no succession plan post-Smiffy, something awful.
Seen a lot in my time, but this one is a real hum-dinger that will no doubt go a long way to restoring Straya to their rightful place as the No.1 cricket team on the planet.
If that wasn't enough, after the Grand Finals, the same gutless faceless men finally made the move to replace that old honky James Sutherland as Chief Executive Officer, after he'd been in the gig for eleven years too long [on the standard HR principle that six years in any job is enough.]
And what a choice choice they have made in one Kevin Roberts, who played 23 first-class games as an opener with an average average for New South Wales, but failed miserably to achieve his main aim in life - to Captain the Blue Bags - a long time ago now.
You'll remember Roberts as CA's chief attack dog in the bitter and protracted pay dispute with the players. A nasty peice of work.
In the end Roberts got Sutherland to do a lot of reverse-pedalling and humiliating backing down after he locked-out the players without pay for a whole month to howls of protest [in the end the Player's Association refused to work with Roberts on account of his utter intrangience], but now that he's the Big Kahuna, all he rabbits on about is "developing and achieving trust" with the players, after he rat-fucked them good and proper last year.
Can someone please tell me what faark is going on?
The man obviously has the widest of support in the greater "Cricket Community" as he goes about smoothing over the troubled waters he played such a big part in creating.
Not.
Roberts is a lap-dog Peever protégé in the dark arts who comes to the Boss Cockyhood under deep suspicion that "the culture" at the Board has not changed one iota since SandpaperGate.
They made damn sure the findings of the two inquiry's into "the culture" that were set up in the wake of the 'scandal' were sidelined.
Shelved, shoved under the carpet, not to be seen or heard of again, and everybody in the "Integrity Unit" has now jumped ship after being treated like offal.
Cricket Australia is a seething behemoth bureaucracy with hundreds of employees and scores of spongers that spends over $45M a year on Media & Marketing alone.
Lord Crikey, if the governing body doesn't need proper steerage, nothing does.
It was a classic case of the need to bring in a highly-qualified talented outsider to sweep the place clean with a bloody great SABCO broom, but that was never going to happen with so many people desperately clinging onto their power trips and bloated stipends.
God help the poor blokes in the god-forsaken United Arab Emirates, who now have a new "in the Chairman's pocket" CEO they hate with a passion, and two Vice-Captains who no-one has any idea of what their responsibilities, if any, are.
What a mess.
SNAFU.
