Sydney, April 2nd, 2011
Reports have reached us this morning of the tragic fate of two fine Australian cricketers. Steve Waugh medalist, Steve O'Keefe, has started to take on the transparent look of a ghost according to team mates. The affliction was first noticed by the young spinner on Wednesday, when the Cricket Australia selectors named their squad for the tour to Bangladesh.
Coincidentally, O'Keefe's fellow Blues spinner Nathan Hauritz, who has suffered from this same strange condition for about six months now, disappeared at about exactly the same time. Hauritz has been gradually fading but is now completely invisible to the naked eye.
Theories as to what may have caused the odd condition have been tossed around between the NSW players, the most prominent being that O'Keefe is disappearing in shame over his idiotic comment to the press, on getting the Steve Waugh award: "I don't think in 50,000 years of human evolution there's words to describe ...". This is a very viable reason, as the comment did make him sound like a complete moron, but it has to be to discarded as a cause as it cannot apply to Hauritz. He's never won anything.
Doctors are completely baffled and, naturally, the management of the NSW Blues are very concerned. Interestingly enough, though, Cricket Australia was not available for comment and, frankly, doesn't really seem to give a shit.
7 thoughts on this post:
Ha! I can explain it! I can explain it now! It's a girls thing. Look, Lou is with us as well on this. That makes three girls. I'm sure Betti would agree as well. And now.... look at the NSP. Any ladies in there? Nope. I think X-Do appeals to the males a bit more than Ritz or SOK. You would think men pay more attention to numbers and figures in tables than to facial features that trigger the wish to get married and have children. But no... X-Do's harmless, soft, round boy-from-next-door face seems to do the trick for him. Well, someone has to abandon Hilditch in the forest. There is no other way.
Cheers,
Wes
Aha!! That must be it. I always suspected My Lord's whole baby-faced look went agaiinst him.
I love Lou's comment:
"He may prove to be as mediocre as everyone else"
True, he might - but that has never bloody stopped the selectors before, has it?
No no he isn't! Which of Aus's spinners in question have ever taken wickets against Pakistan and Sri Lanka? Which of them have ever scored runs against England and Sri Lanka? Which of them are currently POTY of NSW (and Ryobi POTY as well mind) for both, wickets and runs? No no no. SOK is the man, the maaaaan!!! *screeches from the top of the tree*
Not that I'm fanatic about him or so.
Ritz, the other deserving one, will hopefully not have died of invisibility yet once Hilditch's head lies on the chopping block. Metaphorically speaking of course.
I've worked it out. They are going to wait till SOK is in the worst form of his career - it's called 'doing a Hughes' - before they pick him.
If he keeps taking wickets in first class cricket, he might as well give up any chance of the baggy green completely.
Hauritz has been dealt the most massive one card trick by the selectors over summer.
And as for the whacker... looking back it's laughable that they chose 2 such out of form players for the Ashes as the whacker and Smiffy. I wasn't laughing at the time though. Oh, no.
Sorry Wes, I know you are a Smiffy fan, but really that boy needs to sharpen up his technique. The whacker there is no hope for.
I can go along with it being a girls' thing. Or possibly, a lack of gay selectors. Because really, the current players in the Australian XI are a remarkably unattractive bunch.
In addition: the two 'most attractive' Australian domestic teams are NSW and Tasmania and they, of course, were the Sheffield Shield finalists this season. In addition, George Bailey is not only the best Captain in Australia, he is also the most attractive one. Coincidence? Apparently not.
When it comes to spinners specifically, I think the issue might be complicated by the current moro... selectors being particularly unimpressed with attacking spinners who take wickets. I shall never forget Mervyn Hughes's explaining to Mark Waugh (on Inside Cricket) that Jason Krejza had to be dropped because he hadn't been able to 'contain' batsmen; oh, sure, sure, he had taken gazillion wickets in India, but he had gone for runs! And really, a spinner? Taking wickets? In Tests? Pfffft. Good riddance! (For anybody thinking of bringing up Krejza's dismal match in WA, I recommend looking up Warne's record there before you speak; it's quite instructive.) So an attacking, plucky, not-altogether-bad-looking spinner like SOK simply has no chance whatsoever. Not with our current lot of moro... selectors, anyway. When does Hilditch's contract run out again? It's soon, isn't it?! I'm not holding my breath ... but I am keeping my fingers crossed.
I think more gay selectors is definitely the answer, but I bet My Lord still wouldn't get picked.
I'm with Louise on Smith. I am a fan of him as well, but he does need to get his shit together. I'm starting to think of him as a batsman rather than a spinner lately.
Isn't Clarke a bit of a spinner? Maybe he'll have more of an idea what to do with them than Ponting did? We can live in hope.
'Maybe he'll have more of an idea what to do with them than Ponting did?'
If Clarke has less of an idea of what to do and when with spinners and how to set fields to them than Ponting, we might just throw our collective hands in the air and get used to being the number ... oh, say, six cricket team (all forms) in the world for the foreseeable future. I refuse to entertain the idea that anybody could be worse than Ponting in that respect.
Regarding Smith, I don't know what to make of him at the moment. If he's selected in order to develop his bowling skills, fine. But then we have to consistently let him bowl and just absorb the runs and possible losses that will entail. To have him in the team and basically let him bowl only one or two overs makes no sense whatsoever; his batting skills are not such that they warrant selection.
As I have said before, I'm really fed up with the idea of selecting bowlers because they are so handy with the bat. Select batsmen who are handy with the bat and give our bowlers a decent score to bowl to instead. I have no problems with Pup, Captain. I do, however, think it's a problem that he is shackled - and I don't use that word lightly - with a largely ageing, has-been XI. And that's a problem with our current moro...selectors.
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