Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Counterpoint: send them home!

This is not to support the current regime - it is difficult to see any progress in many players in the test team under Mickey Arthur. And it is difficult to see improvement in this rabble over the past year. Often, the simplest call in cases like this is to blame this on the coach. And, from the outside looking in - one can definitely see that the new regime has failed to bring along some of the teams senior players - with the exception of Michael Clarke. Notable amongst this group is Shane Watson.

This is not to say that the batting lineup that will be trotted out for the third test will be watchable. While there is probably some semblance of the top six that will go to the Ashes in Cowan, Warner, Hughes and Clarke - the long awaited test match return of one Steve Smith should fill everyone with dread. Glen Maxwell also appears to be a Smith level douche.

Say what you will about this rabble though, at least they did their fucking homework. To me, what speaks more about this "homework" assignment is that most of the squad did do it. Ed Cowan spent five minutes doing his homework. David Warner spent half a day opening Power Point. Or got Cowan to do his. And then stole his lunch money.

To me, that a couple of senior players didn't manage theirs demonstrates that these senior players may be a big factor in the malaise that seems to have struck this team in the last six months. That two guys who have spent the last month ghost writing Michael Clarke's tour diary couldn't do this is even more damning.

If the message from Arthur was along the lines of:
  • We've been comprehensively smashed in the last two tests.
  • Morale is broken.
  • You might not like the idea of putting together 5 powerpoint slides that explain:
    • what has gone wrong;
    • what you need to do better; and
    • how we can pull together to win the Ashes.
  • But it's important.
  • And if you can't do this, then you are a big part of the problem and can fuck right off.
Then I have no problem with this decision.

Rather than blaming the system, as ex-players are wont to do, one could simply make the case that Australian cricket's poor results in the last six months have more to do with a general lack of elite talent and a tough schedule  - South Africa at home, India away - that this team isn't up for.

Assclown Of The Month - February

Well, we were just about to give this award to John Inverarity again, given the state of Aussie cricket at the moment, but someone else within the Aussie cricket ranks stuck his hand up. And although it is technically March when news has broken that Mickey Arthur's answer to us being shit is to give grown men homework, I'm guessing February was full of the same sort of bullshit, given our performances. The end result of this guy's kindergarten approach to us being fucking hopeless, is to send home our best pace bowler, and a guy who, before injury woes, was holding this team together with both batting and bowling, and a guy who can potentially replace or bump Hughes up the order to replace our opener who is barely managing to average 30...

Anyway, after these naughty fuckers didn't pay some nerd to do their homework, I'm now trying to work out our batting order for the Third Test: Cowan (great!), Warner (hit and miss), Hughes (untrustworthy), Clarke (this is partly your fault because you are, for some unfathomable reason, a selector), Smith (fuck yeah!), Wade (potentially injured, and yeah, of course we didn't take a back up keeper, let alone batsmen), Henriques, Maxwell (out of control slogger) and then the bowlers...

Wow. How fucking underwhelming.
   
And to think this guy has tried to trot out Glenn Maxwell...as a Test player...and now we'll have have to trot out Steve Smith as a Test batsmen...

Has this team improved at all under Mickey Arthur? If, by improved, you mean just fucking unwatchable, then yeah...

Top marks. An A fucking +. 

There is nothing even fucking remotely funny about this shit you Jaapie fucker...

 What do we need this South African Assclown for anyway? We've already got a SuperCoach in waiting, our very own Boof Lehmann!