an unhappy man with a bad barber

Canine Fanciers,

And the moral of the story?
On winning the toss and electing to bat first, never, ever, declare yr 1st innings closed.
Make the bastards bowl you out.
Full stop.
The Poms learnt that lesson 10 years ago now at Adelaide Oval.
Haven't done it again.
Now it's Pakistan's turn.
Did note that during the Boxing Day Damp Squib Score As Many Easy Runs as You Like on an Eight Lane Freeway to a Miracle Victory Test in Mebourne, an on-line petition was raised calling for The Great Michael Clarke to be replaced with Andrew "Roy" Symonds on the Channel Nine commentary team.
Cruel game, cricket.
My Spy at The Ground says the last time he saw Roy, he was sleeping under a bridge in Darwin with a whole lot of busted fishing tackle.
The petition had raised a humungous 600+ signatures at last count.
Hard to work out if it was a joke, a scam, fake news, or what?
Was it really real?
Leaving that to one side side, it's clear that despite being arguably the greatest batsman of the modern era, Pup is still yet to find his niche after being forced to fall on his sword into an early retirement on losing the Ashes under his watch and being unable to put up with his chronic dose of Shagger's Back any longer.
I'm so sorry, Micheal, but your contract on a bloated stipend at Nine won't be renewed for the '17-'18 season.
It's not your game, sad to say...and that's free advice from someone who worked many years in the goddam business.
The poor kiddie is yet to come to terms with the fact that in television it's the pictures that do the talking, but the camera and the editing also lies.
While he is a fair average quality analyst of the game, there is little point in stating the bleeding bloody obvious when it's there on the crystal bucket in bright colour in plain view for all to see in super slo-mo HD micro-detail.
MJ seemed to spend most of his time in the box during Pink Stink III in Brisvegas telling Smiffy how to set his field, and didn't have much to say at all being rostered lightly in commentary after Xmas in Melbun; just directed, mainly, to make funny faces at The Great Warnie while they were together on the telly on the ground during the numerous breaks in play.
Doesn't even seem to have any humourous blokey stories from his glittering playing career to offer the viewer, either.
He could always start with "did I ever tell you about the one that happened that time when I shagged Miss South Africa..."
But, no.
Clarkey has other things going against him as a television commentator; he has image issues - chief among them being his mysterious and as yet unexplained deep unpopularity with the Strayan General Public, and his unique squeaky kind of whining little voice.
Even though allegations have been levelled against me re: loving the bloke to death in Fandomville; the sound of what comes out of his cake-hole even gets on my nerves after a while.
It's a ratings killer.
He certainly doesn't have Jim Maxwell's professionally soothing mellifluous radio "foghorn".
Which brings us around to the perennial question: what do you do with former Australian Prime Ministers and Cricket Captains?
There have been wild rumours circulating that Prime Minister Turn Bullcrap has invited Pup to captain or coach or captain/coach the PM's XI, in a game which has now been shamefully and sadly reduced to an afterthought; an utterly meaningless T20 caper at Manuka with no prestige whatsoever against a Ceylon XI right at the fag-end of the season on Feb 15.
But that's hardly a "job"
It appears being a published author is not Michael's long-suit either.
Reliably informed that his highly anticipated tell-all autobiography My Story was a miserable dud in terms of sales, despite is salacious content and it's magnificent 446 page coffee-table production with more than a hundred photographs.
The book, by rights, should take pride of place in any sports fan's library.
[However, it is true that The Good Lady Wife picked up my copy from a big stack of 'em on the remainder table at K-Mart, of all places, two days before Xmas at $19.95, after it was published in October at RRP $49.95].
Admittedly the lavish hardcover was in a crowded Xmas market with Dennis Lillee, Mitchell Johnson, Brad Haddin, Brad Hogg, and Jim Maxwell all penning half-truths about themselves at the same time for the same readers, but unconfirmed reports coming into the Stats Guru [who obviously knows everything there is to know about numbers] suggest Pup managed to flog only 13,000 copies of My Story in the month leading up to the pre-Xmas rush and the publisher Pan Macmillan has dropped well north of $700K on it.
Deary, deary me.
Unlikely to run into a 2nd edition, you'd imagine.
Compare that to the wealthiest man in cricket, Ricky Ponting, and his tome At the Close of Play, which sold 120,000+ copies in two months at full price, and easily topped the best sellers list by the length of the street.
Joisus.
Clarkey tried being a yachtsman last year, but after one day at sea in a leaky, broken boat in the Sydney-Hobart race, he decided that ocean racing wasn't for him.
Sensible move.
He didn't play many 1st grade games for Western Suburbs this summer, before quietly fading away from that scene with barley a whimper, leaving his sponsored Nepalese teenage leg-spinner in his place.
Perhaps the former Skippy could take up professional pigeon racing?
That'd keep you busy.
While there is no doubt that Clarkey is an astute and highly successful property investor, it's not really a "job" either - all you have to do is sit on yr fat/bony arse and the greatest free gift of all from the Govt - negative gearing - and lightly-taxed capital gain does the rest.
Ka-ching!
He scrupulously follows his sponsor's contractual obligations and is a worthy philanthropist also, doing much of it anonymously - but all rich people have a moral obligation to be one - and while he's done some good works as the 'ambassador' spokesmodel for Pain Australia, what he really needs is full-time work to keep him off the streets and out of dark alleys.
Kyly is busy down the Zen garden path off with the fairies pursuing her own career in the women's magazines, as Kyly, wife of Michael Clarke and mother of one.
Now that's a full-time job.
A chap can change only so many nappies, and Pup doesn't strike me as a man who would be content with being a house husband.
It all give me the shits.
What is to be done with the great man, dammit?
Instead of celebrating his stellar "after cricket" career 18 months on, it is my melancholy duty to report that heading into 2017, MJ Clarke, at 35, looks like an unhappy man with a bad barber.
How did it come to this?