saved by gloom

[Australia's next Great White Hope. Will Pucowski, 20, on scoring his first first-class century. Photo/AAP.]

Aghastee's,

Breaking news! Shock! Horror! Marsh Bros. dropped! The bemused nation cries as one: "about bloody time!" Off they go. To the wilderness. When the Chairmen of the Three Wise Men, TV Hohns, says of the Marshes "the door is certainly not closed" it's code for the thing being well and truly slammed shut, and out the back door you go without so much as a sausage. The Stats Guru has been complaining long and loud about their continued presence in the team. We know that. But he was quick with the abacus to prove his point. SE Marsh has washed up with 38 matches under his Baggy at a very poor batting average of 34.41, while the "all-rounder" MR Marsh has a worse average at 25.39, while his bowling was all but useless, taking a grand total of 35 wickets in 31 games conceding 44 runs per wicket. The only question now is who is going to get the compromising photographs of the selectors that the Marsh Bros. were given by Shane "Figjam" Watson? Who, by the way, still holds the world's record for the most number of times out in the 40's and 90's. Australia hasn't had a genuine all-rounder since Keith Miller. And they sure could use Smiffy at No.3, just quietly.

The new face of the batting lineup, Will Pucovski is an interesting sort of character; the Good Lady Wife says he'll be popular with the Ladies, he suffered a nervous breakdown while scoring 243 for Vic v WA in the Shield, then took a break to deal with his demons, and he's also had a habit of being donged on the bonce by fast bowling too many times and being ruled out with concussion on more than one occasion. He's now reportedly been heavily reminded of the No.1 coaching tip for young batsmen..."watch the ball". And "Pucks" is not yet 21. Good luck to the kid, he'll need it.

You'll remember Perth as a low, slow [match average run-rate? 2.69] quirky aberration in the uncharted territory of a new ground where the curator could do little more than put the pitch out of its misery with the heavy roller, while the Boxing Day Test was just plain baffling. Only two wickets had fallen by lunch on the second grinding day, then 15 bit the dust on the third. My Spy at The Ground shot through a telegraph message at stumps that day in Melbourne "Can someone please tell me WTF happened today?" Nup.

Did note that during the Sydney test, MJ Clarke said on Indian television that Cheteshwar Pujara reminded him of Brian Lara and Sachin Tendulkar. Hello? Has the great man gone mad? Has he been looking at an entirely different player than me? What kind of drugs are you on Pup? What ever they are - don't want them. Or is he just pandering to his teeming legions of newfound TV fans? More likely. Mr Grand Poobah Sir is not even remotely in the same league as those two legends of the game, not by a very long shot - you never hear anything about his style & grace at the crease, because he's got none. He's known as the New Wall for a reason - in reference to his predecessor Rahul "The Wall" Dravid. Ian Chappelli was quoted as saying after Pujabs had tonked up his big ton in Sydney, "he is the best blunter of any bowling attack in the world today". Chetters is just about the most mind-numbing player to watch, and he encapsulated his view of the game on interview after his SCG hundred saying "my job is to score runs, and that's all that matters to me". If only DJ Trump! knew about the New Wall as a cost effective solution to his current difficulties. Purajra could stand on the Mexican border with bat in hand, and there would be no way in the world he'd let any Mexicans, let alone Chinamen, through his defences, he'd just flick 'em all away to the leg side and roll 'em over the boundary.

A personal note of contrition here; all good intentions and genuine attempts to see Test cricket at HQ this year were yet again thwarted at every turn.

The fifth day of the game dawned bleak here in Sydney's Armpit and stayed that way all day. There was a wash of an all pervading grey, as a low cloud cover hung over the megalopolis, and first thing the GLW said to me was "mmm...the light's not looking good". A summer sea fog had drifted in from the coast, meeting moist air rolling off the mountains, and the really bloody annoying result was a fine 'mizzle' - the air misty and the ground damp - but it's not actually raining. Not much cricket had been played anyway since a memorable third day [weatherwise, only], as Straya's batting collapsed in the extreme 38 degree heat...then a swarm of small powerful thunderstorms swept over town, the mercury dropped 15 degrees as a Southerly Buster blew thru', and some parts got two inches in the rain gauge. Prior to that, the care factor in watching the most boring batsman in the known world poke and scratch around for the first two days was less than zero, plus the ground would have been swarming with flies it was so fookin' hot. Call me weak if you like, a "fair-weather fan" [like all Sydneysiders], but that was that.

Called off after tea on "moving day" with India's 600+ on a belter a no shit winning score as thunderbolts and lightning very very frightening boomed and flashed all over the Emerald City as if we were in the wet season tropics. Hardly any play was possible on the fourth day due in most part to the poor light, and not a ball was bowed on the mizzly fifth. A "weather-ruined" test match as far as the Swami Army goes - they wuz dead-set robbed blind of certain victory in the dead rubber - but they went absolutely apeshit on Royal Antler anyway, in the knowledge that the coveted Border-Gavaskar Trophy was already in the dilly bag at 2-1; the first time these Indian gentlemen [with the notable exception of their Captain Kunting King Kohli, to whom the honorific does not apply] had ever won a series, ever, in the Wide Brown Land in 70 odd years of trying. And in the final paralysis, all it took to do it was the suspension of the Strayan top order.

As for the Australian "B" side, well, after being asked to follow on for the first time in Sydney in 31 years, they were miraculously saved by gloom. Nuff said.

An unsatisfactory end to an unsatisfactory start to the first double-header test season in yonks. Simply can't remember the last time a Test match was scheduled for the third day to be played on Australia Day [not in Adelaide tho', that "tradition" is so long gone now it might as well be back in the Dark Ages], let alone a Test in February. Cripes! Who knows what The Lankan Filling Station will dish up at the Gabba and at Manuka? In the current climate of doom, only The Shadow knows.

on the back foot

Time wasters,

What a crappy little Test match in Adelaide to start off the summer - a dead-as-a-doornail drop in pitch, shocking over rates, extremely poor run-rates, and the standard of umpiring was simply appalling. Any other complaints or excuses? OK, it was tough on the first two days. 38+ degrees? Meh. Good beer drinking weather to be sure, but try playing for five days in Madras. Just ask Deano, he'll tell you. At least it went the full five days, unlike recent Pink Stink's in Adelaide, that were lucky to make three.

The new owners of the game - Channel Seven - were desperately trying to stave off the boredom and slumping ratings with the commentaors constantly saying "isn't this great...a return to the much loved good old days of Test cricket".

My arse. Wot? Go back to the days of say, Geoffrey Boycott and chums, who were about as exciting to watch as the grass growing around their feet. People forget that back in the days of eight-ball overs, the over-rates were very good, and the run-rate was quick. The Donald [as in Bradman], for instance, never ever "ground out" an innings in his life. Never mind the alleged artistry of his stroke-play, Bradman was so popular simply because he scored his runs so quickly [and rarely got out], compared to the average Joe Blow.

The Stats Guru was quick to point out that the unsung hero for India was R Ashwin, who bowled an astonishing 86.5 overs for the match, took six wickets, but most importantly, conceded well under two runs an over. Tied them up in knots, he did, which wasn't that hard on that deck. In the view of the man with the abacus, he should have been man-of-the-match...Mr Poojah's 246 ball century didn't cut the mustard in the grand scheme of things.

In the entire match, the run-rate never came even close to three runs an over in any of the four innings. The punching power of Burbs and Smiffy are long gone, and India are more than happy to go into the trenches and battle out a game of attrition. Straya's problem is they fell into the trap of playing the game the way the opposition wanted them to play. At no stage did they even remotely look like taking control of proceedings. Constantly on the back foot, so to speak, with an inexperienced Captain, who at various crucial points in the field, looked fairly clueless.

In the final paralysis, the 15 run first innings led was priceless, as is a 1-0 lead in a four match series. Straya now have to win a minimum of two of the next three games to reclaim the much esteemed Border-Gavaskar Trophy, which one random punter of sub-continental extraction tried to explain to a TV camera outside the ground "is much bigger than the Ashes these days, you know". Gawd...if England were playing, Adelaide Oval would have been as full as a boot on, they would have been hanging from the fig trees for all five days, rather than less than half full.

That useless Pommy Bamford NJ Llong had an absolute shocker - got no idea how many of his decisions were overturned by DRS - but these days Umpires, it seems, couldn't care less. In this day and age of hyper-surveillance, if they get it wrong, it will always be righted by God Television. The fundamental age-old concept of "The Man in White is Always Right" has now been totally undermined, even though they forget that the camera always lies. And as one of my Spies at The Ground astutely observed, the Bamfords have completely given up on looking at the bowler's footfall - stacks of no-balls were bowled, and went undetected. Now that's cheating, plain and simple. Again, the Stats Guru backed this up...of the 66 sundries entered in the scorebook, only five were no-balls. Five in five days. And they must have over-stepped by a country mile.

In this new age of Straya playing all gentlemanly-like, y'know, not too soft, not too hard, there was still plenty of chit-chat, and of course that Viral Rat Kohli just cannot help himself, once again proving to be beyond doubt the worst kind of serial pest. The freak should have been fined at least 25% of his match fee, for mine, just for being goose.

Kohli's gobful of a send-off for Finch when he was cleaned up by Sharma on the second day was an utter disgrace. Strayan coach Alfie Langer was quoted as saying his charges would've been called “the worst blokes” if they indulged in that kind of nonsense. Don't you hate it when there's one rule for some, and another for others? What a sqwarking dickhead, who did nothing with the bat, Kohli was constantly chirping away at Paine and getting in his face when he was at the crease, and the Indian skipper instructed Pant to get right up our Token Muzzie's nose from behind the wicket, reportedly saying to Uzzie "Not everyone is Pujara out here, mate." That's a very cheap shot, if ever there was one. Lucky that kind of stuff rolls off Khawaja's back...he's heard it all before.

So, what would Pup do?

At least Straya proved that they are competitive [the losing margin was about right], if timid. Nothing wrong with the bowling attack, they are much better than India in Strayan conditions, but Lord Crikey the batting is a worry. You might as well set fire to 1-6 in the batting order and start again. But of course that'd be the last thing the Chairman of Selectors and the Three Wise men will do. All they'll most likely do is drop the HandyComb and reinstate the Vice-Captain so Marsh Jnr and Marsh Jnr Jnr can play in front of their home crowd at a brand spanking new stadium. Haven't gone through the arduous task of checking all the latest Sheffield Shield scores - but on the word of others who have - no-one is crying out "pick me! pick me!"

Sheesh...the way it's going, it's gonna be a long and lazy summer, with plenty of chances to take a nap between lunch and tea.

too soft

Cut-throat Thugee's,

Everybody knows the Super Kat has been wanting to strangle Pup, again, for the last nine years, but it takes MJ Clarke to say the "S" word on commercial radio to get on the news these days, now he's a gentleman of leisure on account of he's "one of the most polarising figures to have worn the baggy green in recent times". [Never mind that Pup will actually be calling the upcoming Test matches for Star TV from a studio in Mumbai, while he's enjoying the cocktail circuit and shagging "mystery blondes" in his spare time. "Sorry Kyls, won't be home for Xmas"].

The quote at issue being "we're not going to win shit".

He's right of course, and you have to concede, the man does have a point. No-one wants to win a turd.

Now that "winning at all costs" has been strictly forbidden by the Powers That Be under a thing called the Player's Pact, with recommendations to the MCC that new Laws be introduced designed to limit sledging, and umpires be issued with yellow cards, and such like, plainly, the good old days have gone away. Testosterone-fuelled aggression has been banned outright. Condemned well and truly to the lil' history books. Now that you can't call a ninny a ninny, some of the great sledges of yore will be consigned to the musty shelves of the Lord's Library under the Dewey number for "pearls of wisdom". Do they have a collection of tampered balls in the Lord's Museum, along with other illegally altered equipment, like Dennis Lillee's aluminum bat or Javed Miandad's cast iron floppy hat?

No more is Straya permitted to grind Poms into the dust for days on end - which used to be one of the finest sights in world sport. Banned. No more finely sandpapering the Seth Efreaken's until you have an lovely effigy of a kaffir-kicking Boer. Illegal. No more calling a spade a spade in the West Indies. Not kosher. No more sticking it right up those bloody Indians, because, let's face it, the Indians don't like it up 'em. Don't like it at all. The Paki's have always been the Paki's, who were unsurpassed in days gone by for their deviousness and sharp practice. Straya never plays New Zealand or Sri Lanka or Bangladesh or Zimbabwe or Afghanistan or the Netherlands, so they can go suit themselves. But now, the Strayan players just have to put up with it all. Never mind your mother's sexual history being called into question, if some-cunt calls you a-weak-cunt - then what? You're now expected to cop it on the chin? Turn the other cheek according to the gospel of Matthew, Holy Jesus style?

When did the "rot" set in, before or after the greatest batsman of his generation resigned the Captaincy? That's a concept up for debate. But Clarkey quite certainly wasn't involved in any ghastly ball tampering this year, so he is entitled to take umbrage, and forget the inconvenient truth that Strayan teams on his watch were rather famous, by and large, for being loud-mouthed hard bastards with a penchant for night-club violence. He reminded folks that they do tend to forget how he let his bat do the talkin', and the worst he got down to was threatening "to rip the bloody arms off" some completely insufferable Pom. But by Michael's reasoning, with victory by any means now outlawed, the Strayans will have to play for the honourable draw for the time being, and with the First Test just six days away in Adelbrain, it's well worth backing at $4.50.

The Super Kat jibe was water off Clarkey's back; as Simon says himself, their relationship amounts to "less than zero" - but then Gerard Whateley, who's well known among the ABC cardigans for selling his soul to the devil, had to wade in to say that Pup had "missed the point". The point being that winning a turd isn't the point as the authorities have unilaterally declared that it's all changed and different now, with atonement, redemption, deference and respect making a comeback to a more mythical gentlemanly time. The so-called Spirit of the Game must be invoked at all times. There wasn't much deference or respect in Bodyline, was there? Same as it ever was. Pup couldn't let that pass and blew his top. And the former Captain also couldn't resist calling the radio caller names, describing Whateley as a "headline-chasing coward" and inviting him to take his coat off and meet him outside.

Warnie and Vaughnie are in Pup's corner, and even Haydos reckons you don't play Test cricket to get a Masters Degree in being a "good bloke". Just ask that Viral Rat Kohli, he'll tell you, because he is not a good bloke, and will take every opportunity to get under the Strayan's skin now that winning for them isn't everything anymore. Conducting yourself with the utmost decorum is far more important. The Strayans are now required to take even the lowest of low provocations, at which the Indians are specialists, in their stride. Be prepared for some surprises. Endless niggling with any comeback now strictly verboten can get to a bloke. Just ask Smiffy. Kohli is solely responsible for doing SPD Smith's head in in Poona, leading directly to many moments of madness. Pup had nothing to do with that.

Perhaps it's best to leave the last word to the newly crowned Strayan coach Alfie Langer, who told the press "I don't know what you people want. We were too aggressive and probably stepped over the line, and now we're being called too soft."

Glad the coach knows what's going on. No-one else does.

a heavily redacted document

Whingers,

Can some one please tell me just what-the-fuck is going on? Nothing else.

Cricket Australia chairman David Peever was quietly 're-elected' for another three years on the cocktail circuit as Chairman of the Board last week, just before he's savaged [by implication] as an "arrogant" sponger and "dictatorial" bully by his own 'Ethics Review'.

Yesterday, I got a thoughtful e-mail from the card-carrying-cunts at CA entitled "An Open Letter to you, our Australian Cricket Family", claiming that Good Ol' Peevsy had come up with an "honest and heartfelt response to the current state of play", and what a heartfelt bit of spun-up total poppycock it is. You can read the whole miserable, sniveling thing here.

Take this line just as a for instance..."While at times difficult to read and in some instances, difficult to agree with what has been implied – CA respects the findings of the review and what needs to be done to restore faith and prompt change."

Code for, righto, we'll sweep this one under the carpet while we continue to get on with the very serious business of dudding the Australian Cricket Family, not to mention the actual players - who are now expected to conduct themselves as complete and utter gentlemen without reproach on and off the field who cannot under any circumstances whatsoever 'win at all costs'. Here's an idea. Why not have a send off rule for the foul of mouth and the doers of evil? Brilliant! That'll solve everything. Great thinking 99.

The poor, poor umpires.

Boof took the teary fall and promptly disappeared off the face of the planet, Smiffy dropped a lazy 5-10 mill, Burbs Warner remain a bit touchy, can't take a sledge in a grade game and storms off the ground, Sutherland outlived his usefulness and was put out to a very lush pasture, while that crook Peever is fully immune to anything approaching "prompt change", along with his long-standing partners in crime such as Roberts, Howard, Hohns etc etc etc et al...

You have to love the fact that the public exhibition of the 'Ethics Review' report is actually a heavily redacted document, and everybody knows the only reason documents are redacted with a crude black texta is to protect the guilty.

There would be journo's out there as we speak busily working with their alchemists to remove the blank outs, and NAME NAMES in the papers. You can bet the house on that. Until that happens, nothing, absolutely nothing, will change.

Here's one of my favourites from the 'Ethics Review's 147 pages of mumbo-jumbo...

For the long-suffering Strayan cricket fan, what a time to be alive.

poor, poor Pup

Bean Counters,

Poor, poor Pup.

The Great Man has failed to make this year's AFR Young Rich List https://www.afr.com/leadership/afr-lists/young-rich/atlassian-cofounders-lead-young-rich-list-2018-20180918-h15jji

Weep my friends, Clarkey didn't even come close. $26 million [the net worth of one of the co-founders of Pedestrian TV of all things https://www.pedestrian.tv/] is the cut off point for 100th in the top 100 richest bastards in the country under 40.

At last report, MJ Clarke's net worth was only $16 million and falling, what with the real estate market going Antarctic, and Pup now consigned to being an unpopular unemployed former cricket 'celebrity' who is not asked for his opinion on anything anymore, you'd expect any sponsorships he still has will dry up over the coming year and he'll be lucky to have two bob to rub together in another 12 months.

To add insult to injury, complete & utter wally's in the form of Shane FIGJAM Watto Watson and Mitchell Joke Johnno Johnson are both richer than Pup, while other former Strayan skippers in Mr Ponting [$65M] and Mr Waugh [$27M] are now old men on another obscenely wealthy planet entirely.

In a list containing an astonishing number of millenial shonks and shysters [e.g.: tech wack-jobs, dodgy beauty products, and useless snake oil merchants aside, who would have thought there's a fortune to be made in leasing cars to Uber drivers?], My Mate Smiffy has done alright, despite suffering in disgrace after being sent shame-faced to Purgatory due to all that fuckery with a cricket ball on The Veldt.

While SPD Smith may have dropped between 5 and 10 mill on a few sheets of low grade South African sandpaper, the best batsman on the planet is still worth $27 million. DA Warner may well have squeezed onto the list also, if not for Tamper Gate, but still has a dilly bag with 17 mill in it.

However, both of them are very heavily exposed to Sydney real estate [and as everyone knows, anyone can do that standing on their heads] with at least half a doz negatively geared gaffs each, although Smiffy has taken a 10% share in "on-line furniture company Koala" https://www.koalaliving.com.au/ as a spot of speculative insurance.

It'll be interesting to see where Smiffy and 'Burbs square up after doing their time in exile.

But at 37, Pup can only stare at the slippery slope in hope.

lost in the frenzy of Grand Final Fever

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.

"he is an awesome Australian"

Hillites,

Now that the football season is over, it's perhaps time to turn our attention to the forthcoming season of the summer game and look forward to wasting whole weeks at a time during the Silly Season to the soundtrack of the thwack of willow on leather and the ripple of polite applause, by asking - what would Pup do?
The Great Man has been unusually quiet of late, apart from copping a right bollocking for endorsing some fly-by-night get-rich-quick scheme being offered by Dodgy Bros. Pty Ltd of Brisbane.
No one has asked for his opinion on the cricket lately, and Michael has certainly been entirely silent on the subject of being so rudely brushed by Channel Seven for their brand spanking new commentary team for the you-beaut whizz-bang cricket telecasts we'll all be enjoying this summer.
Clarkey was always very leery of being a selector; he voluntarily gave up the job that had been foisted on him when he was skipper on the well grounded principal of "you pick 'em, I'll play 'em", but would Pup have come up with this mob of 14 to play Pakistan in two tests in Abbers and Doobers next month?

Tim Paine (c), Ashton Agar, Brendan Doggett, Aaron Finch, Travis Head, Jon Holland, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitchell Marsh, Shaun Marsh, Michael Neser, Matt Renshaw, Peter Siddle, Mitchell Starc.

Labuschagne [what kind of South African name is Marnus, anyway]? Neser [another South African]? Dogget? Has anyone ever heard of these people?
31-year-old Jonny Holland [played two tests two years ago] in a battle with Ashton Agar [four tests on very friendly tracks] for the second spinner's spot?
But most remarkably, the ranks of the quicks must be very thin indeed with the selection of Peter Siddle, who'll be 34 in November.
OK, Cummins and Hazo are both very flaky and prone to being rooterised by injury, but where are the young tear-aways coming through the ranks? Nothing to see there.
Must have been under the misapprehension that Sids had given the 1st class game away yonks ago, or was he brought out of retirement for this one?
In any case, did spot the brand new Strayan coach Alfie Langer on the telly [he had the decency and sense to wear a sports coat, wisely eschewing Boof's ill-fitting bag of a track suit] saying that Sids had been picked only because "he is an awesome Australian".
A tried and true servant of the game is Sids, a class bowler in his day, with vast experience being the perennial bridesmaid at 12th man - no doubt about that - but "awesome" is a much overused word these days Alfie. Maybe he's just trying to stay in toon with the Yoof of Today?
No idea.
GJ "The Big Show" Maxwell has been cruelly snubbed again [Alfie: "there's a method to our madness"] due to him bagging the selectors.
As usual, there are too many Marsh's in the squad, and note also, that no Vice Captain has been named.
Perhaps they have done away with the meaningless office, after it was so was thoroughly put through the wringer by 'Burbs Warner of sandpaper infamy?

Of more import is this year's major touring team, India, so it's pleasing to see that they have continued their grand tradition of being unable to win away from home, being tidied up very nicely by the Poms 4-1 thank you very much.
The Evil Viral Rat had excuses galore after India were tipped for their best showing in the Heart of the Empire for a decade, but the fact remains that the Poms are as good at pitch doctoring as the Indians, and the Sub Continentals will never do no good on bouncy wickets in the Wide Brown Land, because they don't like it up 'em, don't like it all.
There are now inevitable calls for Kohli to be sacked as Captain...the Times of India said in an editorial that he "dons the roles of chief ball polisher, sledger-in-chief, DRS caller, umpire chatterer, schedule decider, huddle addesser, and media hater" implicating he's too busy to actually lead the team.
It's also come to my attention that India has a player called Pant, so no doubt he will be dubbed "Trouser" by the louts on the hill in Straya...as in "oi, drop ya daks, Trouser, and gissa look".

So there is hope yet to avenge Straya's last tour of India, the sheer absurdity and stress of which drove Smiffy off his rocker, out of his mind, and over the edge.
But not much.

On a side note, it should be put on the record that Alastair Cook CBE knocked up yet another ton in his final match in the test caper [33 tons at an average of 45], so he's now a dead-set certainty for a knighthood...but did overhear someone saying the other day about Cookie "I cannot remember a single shot he played, but I do remember watching him bat for a very long time".
And James Anderson is now the leading all-time fast-bowling wicket-taker in Test matches - that's probably just a function of the number of games played these days [Jimmy's been going around for 15 years] - but he aint no Ooh Aah Glenn McGrath, who he's just overtaken on the record list, oh no, siree.
After playing with him for 12 years, Cookie was asked what he thought of Jimmy, and he just called Anderson "a freak"...enough said.
There's also been some Pommy song and dance about a ball that the Englishman Adil Rashid bowled being comparable to Warnie's "Ball of the Century".
Absolute poppycock. It was a good nut to be sure, that turned at right angles a country mile outside off [could well have been called as a wide] on a made to order pitch, but it had none if the sheer poetry of Warnie getting Gatters, so that's all that can be said about that.

At least the Powers That Be have thought far enough ahead to give the Strayans a two-test warm-up in over-cooked far-away lands ahead of the Indian summer, but it's a shame that the magnificent old Sharjah ground is no longer in use.
It's an approrite metaphor for the state of cricket Down Under at the minute; the ground was abandoned, left to rot in ruins and was over-run by goats and chickens, but it did manage to rise like a phoenix from the ashes in time to host the 2018 Blind Cricket World Cup final back in January, and nothing of note has been played there since.