Time to Drown the Rat King

The Australian cricket team and all associated with such a low-rent production can consider themselves lucky that the crosshairs of fate had me squarely in their vision, leaving me sidelined and silent over the most squalid and stained summer in living memory.

I am back now though and make no mistake: heads are about to be kicked, ears are about to bleed, those in positions of power are about to be torn down. This shit-storm of a summer must surely see a fundamental shift in Australian cricket; the way the game is approached and the attitude displayed by those who wield power and influence.

The Ashes are now well and truly gone. Australian cricket was sodomised, pounded until it bled from every orifice. The Australian cricket team deserved the humiliation bestowed upon it this summer. It deserved to be left cowering like a beaten dog. It deserved to be shunned by all of the country, told to shut up and piss off like drunk Uncle Frank at Christmas dinner.

A three Tests to one defeat. Three Tests defeats on home soil by an innings. Only three centuries from two batsmen over the course of five Test matches. Only three batsmen averaging over 32 and only one over 50. Only one bowler with an average under 34. A total of five total wickets from spin bowlers with not one tweaker averaging under 100. Australia’s so-called best bowler, Mitchell Johnson, going at over 4 per over, taking a lowly 6 wickets in three Tests if Perth is taken out of the equation. The captain and vice-captain scoring a lowly 306 runs at an average of 18. Dropped catches. An array of run outs.

It was total humiliation, a kind not bestowed on Australian cricket in a quarter-century.

The seeds of such shame were sewn well before last summer. James Sutherland, Andrew Hilditch, Ricky Ponting, Michael Clarke and so many others planted their knees in the dirt, raked the soil and sowed the seeds of Australian cricket’s destruction.

There were four significant factors that led to Australia fielding not only an uncompetitive team but a team far from its strongest this summer. These factors were selection based on personal favouritism, a blinding obsession with youth, a total greed that permeated all facets of the upper-levels of Australian cricket and an unrelenting selfishness amongst the playing group and the Cricket Australia administration

Andrew Hildtich and Ricky Ponting are the two most culpable men in Australian cricket but James Sutherland and the Cricket Australia board should not be absolved as they have been almost criminally derelict in their duties in allowing Hilditch to continue in his job after such obvious selection bias over the last four seasons. The most glaring example of said bias is Brad Hodge. Clearly one of the top two or three batsmen in the country over the last decade including the last three-to-four years when the decline of Australian cricket has quickly become a sharp fall, Hodge has been overlooked time and time again without explanation. He was not called upon to play Test cricket when openings appeared over the last few seasons despite a Test average of over 55 and the unchallenged honour of being the best bat in Australian domestic cricket. He was driven to retire from first class cricket and when he was most needed this summer, an olive branch was not extended his way. Of course, that came as no surprise. Nor was it a shock when Brad Hodge was overlooked for the Twenty20 and ODI teams and subsequently the World Cup despite breaking all kinds of records with his form in the shortened versions of the game over the last three years. Hodge is, arguably, the best short form bat in the world yet he cannot make an Australian squad that included two cripples.

The selectors have their head so deep in their asses that Hodge would not have even been considered. It is Caligula’s den in the selection room, a circle jerk where the selection panel stand around, jocks around the ankles, beating off over Mitchell Johnson, Michael Clarke and Shane Watson. Brad Hodge has done something to piss someone off and has now been blacklisted. His personality didn’t fit with the scented candle loving, pink cocktail drinking, insecure culture fostered under Ricky Ponting and the result is a line being placed through his name. Fuck the moronic selectors and fuck the Rat King, Ricky Ponting. Brad Hodge should have been the first bat selected this summer yet he was not available and was not chosen because he was not one of the little boys groomed by the Australian selectors like a paedophile who grooms his prey.

The reverse, of course, is true as well. Michael Clarke managed to average a paltry 21 and has embarrassed Australian cricket for a long time now yet his position was never under threat. It is the same story with Mitchell Johnson. He got dropped for Adelaide after a pathetic effort in Brisbane. He bowled well in favourable conditions in Perth and his spot is again secure despite two horrid efforts in Melbourne and Sydney. Despite all the chatter, how much thought was actually given to dropping Ricky Ponting? Zero. All the pets were looked after.

The blinding obsession with youth was just as costly. At some point, you do need to build for the future. But there has to be some moment in the future that is aimed for. One would have thought that an Ashes series was it. One would have thought an Ashes series would have been the Grand Final, the time to say “look, all we need is five Test matches from someone so therefore the best team is selected, the team that is most likely to roll the Poms.” It shouldn’t matter if that player is 60. If an Ashes series is not important enough to do that, what part of the future is? What are we actually building for? Such an illogical  fascination with youth cost Australia Brad Hodge (to a certain degree) and Stuart Clark and played a significant role in our best spinner, Bryce McGain, not getting the call-up. McGain won’t be there for the next trip to England. McGain may not even be there next summer. Who cares? McGain was the spinner who offered Australia the most now and he could have been well established had the Australian selectors shown patience and not obsessed over youth. They didn’t. And we had to endure Xavier Doherty and Michael Beer as a result.

On Stuart Clark, he was the type of bowler Australia needed. As Australia leaked runs at an alarming rate all summer, the Glenn McGrath prototype was left plugging away for New South Wales, averaging under 30 with an economy rate of 2.37 per over. Australia, instead, went with Johnson, Hilfenhaus, Siddle and Bollinger because of Clark’s age.

There is no doubt that greed also impacted Australia’s Ashes series humiliation. Not too many of the Australian team could look themselves in the mirror and say that the Ashes was given the priority it deserved.

Some of it was caused by the greedy board who insisted on a series in India and a run of meaningless ODI’s that forced the Australian team to head into the Ashes series on the back of wickets, opponents and game-type that offered nothing in the way of an Ashes preparation.

The players deserved to be hammered for their greed and selfishness though. Michael Clarke and Phil Hughes both attended breakfast functions as the Ashes lay on the line. Both were snapped out on the drink during the Melbourne Test. This was a disgraceful example set by Clarke and a talentless hack like Hughes, both of whom offered nothing all series.

On the field, the tale was the same with selfishness the name of the game. Shane Watson was involved in three critical run-outs. Twice, Watson was involved in a run out when trying to save a match attempting a stupid run or trotting lazily between wickets. Worse, he put Australia in all kinds of trouble in Adelaide when running Simon Katich out for a diamond duck in the very first over of the Test as Watson, for purely selfish reasons. Watson wanted to get off the mark and sacrificed the best bat in the team as a result. Watson’s antics say nothing for batsmen flinging away like they were playing Twenty20 cricket. The sight of Australian batsmen trying to blast sixes when they should have been trying to hold out for a draw was simply embarrassing and reflected the current character of the Australian team. Mensches, they are not.

The biggest insult all summer came when chairman of selectors Andrew Hilditch arrogantly stated that the panel had done a good job. Hilditch and the panel did as sterling a job as Czechoslovakia did in the lead-up to World War II. It is not even enough to see Hilditch dumped along with the rest of the panel. Hilditch should be castrated to stop him breeding before he is expelled to the Pitcairn Islands. He will be joined by James Sutherland, whose continued support of both Hildtich and Ponting makes him complicit in this clusterfuck. Ricky Ponting should, of course, be sacked along with Michael Clarke, who can spend the rest of his life tweeting from whatever opium den he ends up in. Drown the Rat King and all those tied up with him.

The time for change is now. If Cricket Australia won’t make the changes then cricket in Australia can go fuck itself. People have had enough. Heads are being demanded. And heads we shall get.