Filed under aussies …

Sep 27 2011
13 Comments
aussies

Is Troy Cooley M. Yass?

Troy Cooley has been named as the interim head coach of Australia while Greg Chappell gets his resume in order.

It’s hard to warm to this news, it’s like finding out that a band who’s first album was kinda ok is making a come back by playing their greatest hits in your kitchen.

In my self acclaimed new book ‘Australian Autopsy‘ I posed the question of whether Mitchell Johnson actually exists, or whether he is just a construct of Troy Cooley.

It made sense at the time. Now I realise that I might have got this all wrong.

It’s more possible that Troy Cooley is the myth.

A administracratic fudge that has never been correctly audited.

This is where we need Alex Gibney and a documentary crew, because, what does anyone know about him?

They say he played first class cricket for Tasmania, but no one watches first class cricket in Tasmania, only %30 of shidl fans know they are one of the six sides.

I mean if you are going to invent a first class cricketer, Derbyshire, Otago, Leeward Islands and Tasmania are surely safest options.

Even his numbers for Tasmania don’t add up.  33 first class matches with a bowling average of 61 and a batting average of 9.  Surely no one would continue to pick someone with those figures.  What is more likely, the selectors kept picking him, or when putting in a fake record some administracrat put in wrong numbers?

Then his List A are  4 matches with a bowling average of 21. Come 0n, this isn’t even pretending to be real.

They say he coached the England bowlers in the 2005 Ashes. There are photos of a man with the team, but if no one ever saw Troy Cooley before that, how would they know if it was Troy Cooley.  There was occasionally a picture of a tall man taken during that time.

That series led to him be lauded as the best bowling coach on earth. But the ECB didn’t offer him an extension of his contract, or any contract from what I can tell, and he just left.

I mean if this really was the bowling supercoach, why would he just be allowed to leave o easily? It doesn’t add up.

Then “Cooley” turns up in Australia. The man in the photo pays a passing resemblance to the other Cooley, but if I took 12 random men off the street and put Cooley in the middle of them, would anyone know which one was Cooley?

No.

So photos and first class record don’t prove that Cooley is a real being.

What else can? Surely not Mitchell Johnson’s record or Kabbir Ali’s career.

There is no way to prove that Cooley is real or not.

But then, how did Cooley come into the cricket world you lazily whine.

Easy. You can imagine some Tasmanian official thinking, “We need to make cut backs. We don’t really need a bowling coach, do we? I can’t leave the box blank, because then people will question it. Troy Cooley, that sounds real.”

Suddenly Troy Cooley is real. And everyone time a cricket photographer has a unidentified tall man in their frame, they either cut him out or say it’s Troy Cooley.

If it is possible that Troy Cooley was an average bowler turned handy bowling coach, coached one amazing attack, confused some bowlers, struggled with a mediocre attack and then became a head national coach on a temporary basis, isn’t it also possible that Troy Cooley is not a real man but just a name that people keep writing in empty boxes.

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Sep 11 2011
5 Comments
aussies

Nathan’s broken face is just the beginning

It was bound to happen. It’s been brewing for some time now, and if it was going to happen to anyone, it was going to happen to Nathan.

Frankly, the way Cricket Australia has treated them, and encouraged others to treat them, it is amazing it has taken this long.

But now the truth lays bloodstained on the floor of a Hervey Bay pub.

Australian spinners are now victims of hate crimes.

Some will suggest that Nathan Hauritz getting punched is a one off thing, and the police and Cricket Australia will try and spin it that way, but it’s simply not true.

The Australian public turned against this section of society a while back, and with fear mongering from the Spinnerist media and fire starting by Cricket Australia it was clear that a mob mentality would turn this violent.

Hauritz was lucky to survive his attack, but it isn’t just him.

Xavier Deoherty was denied access to a pub in Devonport, when he asked why the security guy told him his sort weren’t welcome there.

Bryce McGain was spat on by an elderly woman in a café.

Beau Casson was given a wedgie by several mean high school bullies.

And Greg Matthews was pelted with eggs, although that might be unrelated.

Nathan Lyon has picked a very good time to be out of the country.

Young kids who bowl spin are already being disowned by their parents, or being told to do it in private.

Old coaching manuals are being burnt for having any mention of Spin.

There is even a conspiracy that Shane Warne’s new appearance has been done just so he can distance himself from his spinning past.

‘I hate spinners’ facebook groups are popping up every day and pouring more bile inducing vitriol onto these pour spinners.

Some are selling ‘bash a spinner’ bumper stickers.

One day we could remember Nathan Hauritz being whacked in the face as the moment when we had a choice, we can stand up for them now, or watch the mob rip all of them piece to piece.

Otherwise one day we could find ourselves saying, first they came for the right arm offspinner, and I did not speak out because I was not a right arm offspinner…

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Sep 03 2011
5 Comments
aussies

David Warner ends the need for cricket satire

“CA’s NSP announces David Warner will travel to Sri Lanka as standby player for Ricky Ponting who is returning home for birth of 2nd child”.

That is what Cricket Australia tweeted.

Well that’s it then, my job here is clearly redundant.

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Sep 01 2011
13 Comments
aussies

Nathan Lyon: Is that you, Jesus?

Have you ever sat back and thought about how people knew Jesus was their saviour.

I mean, he did some cool shit, but if he did the same shit now he’d be wearing a suit with shoulder pads and staring like a sex pest into the camera.

People were obviously easier to impress in those days, I mean, if I went back with an iPhone and a torch five minutes after Jesus, there would probably be paintings of a whiter than usual version of me half naked with a six pack and manly beard on walls around the world.

Recent Australian spinners like Jesus, they’re often sacrificed.

Recent Australian cricket fans are like medieval people, desperate for salvation.

But is Lyon actually the real deal.

I mean was today’s spell was more water into wine more than walking on water.

Because this pitch looks like it wants nothing more than wickets.

If any pitch in world cricket is going turn water into wine it’s this one.

You can almost suggest that the pitch has done more dramatic party tricks than Lyon, it turned Shane Watson into a Test bowler, that’s fucken biblical.

The Galle pitch or not, people will flock to Lyon and ask him to cure them of their spin woes.

It’s inevitable, because they have been starved for so long, well only four years, but it feels like 40 years in the desert to most of us.

It would be unfair on the back of one innings to say that Lyon is or isn’t a spin bowling messiah, yet, it will happen.

Desperate people want to believe, and Lyon’s scruffy I’ve been walking through the desert look combined with the fact he just magically appeared with no one really documenting his life before this will mean that he will thought of as a saviour.

Even if just for this one test.

The problem is Nathan Lyon is just a man, he can probably turn water into wine when conditions favour it, but he’ll drown if he tries to walk on water.

It’s also possible that he is a false prophet, that this is just some random fluke that he can never repeat again.

And don’t say that can’t happen, I’ve still got my monogrammed ’Jason Krejza is my saviour’ dressing gown.

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Aug 30 2011
5 Comments
aussies

Can you kill Greg Chappell?

There has been a lot of rumour about how Greg Chappell will be fired, let go, deflated or re-structured out of cricket Australia. Some think he may just leave because of his pride has been wounded.

Ofcourse I find it odd that you need a review into the whole cricket structure to see that Greg Chappell was a destabilizing influence on a cricket team, I’d have thought the South Australian, Indian and Australia A players who had the benefit of his Guru mind would have been able to tell Cricket Australia ahead of time that Greg, former champion that he is, is utterly living in a world far removed from anything resembling reality.

It’s Gregland, where all batsmen have their bats on the ground until the bowler delivers and he finds superstar cricketers when building his house made of fairy floss.

It takes more than a bomb or bullet to kill someone in their own reality. No, if James Sutherland wants to end this national talent manager, he’ll need more than a manilla folder at his side.

That’s also why I struggle to believe that Greg will actually go. This isn’t like Hilditch, we know he is gone, he even seemed happy to leave, but Greg isn’t like him.

Greg’s survived his own personality and Sourav Ganguly, the two most corrosive substances known to man, so how could a fucken report do him in?

What needs to happen here is Sutherland has to travel into Gregland with a stake, silver bullet, chainsaw and a copy of Bob Woolmers the art and science of cricket.

His first adventure will be overcoming the Ganguly gully of ghastliness.

Then he shall have to defeat the teetotal trees of destruction.

After that he’ll have to take down the underarm underclass soldiers.

Then, and only then, will little James be ready to take down the Greg himself.

He’ll need Bob Woolmer’s book to distract Greg while he plunges the stake through the heart, shoots the silver bullet into his hide, and takes his head off with the chainsaw.

That might still not be enough, but at the very least that should stop Greg entering the changing room and annoying the players.

You can’t kill him, I mean if you could, surely someone would have by now.

Ofcourse, Australia’s other option is getting him a job with the opposition team before each series…

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Aug 24 2011
10 Comments
aussies

The Gimber Jaigh report on a review (Argus me baby)

This is basically just me and Gideon Haigh talking shit about Australian cricket for the best part of 90 minutes.

Some of you may prefer to choke a bunch of small puppies instead, which I understand, but for those of you sick enough, here we wibble about argus and shit.

Download it here.
Available on itunes.
Here is the feed.
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Aug 19 2011
5 Comments
aussies

Ding Dong the Hilditch is dead

Andrew Hilditch will go down in history as some guy who did some things.

Good for him.

Perhaps in ten years with then gaping puss ridden wounds of Australian cricket have healed, people will look back and say, “hey, that Hilditch was fun, why can’t we have fun people like that now”.

Of all the chairman of selectors I’ve grown up with, he was the one most likely to be found in a back alley in Adelaide, naked, stabbed, pissed on and generally defiled by some spinner who was done over.

Perhaps that will be Hilditch’s lasting legacy, showing us that via picking people who are just not ready for test cricket, and then fucking them over, you can send a Beau or Nathan into a spiraling shitfall of despair.

He’s less a selector and more a social activist, showing us what can go wrong with society through elaborate 5 year pranks.

It’s only fair to Hilditch that you pause to remember the good times.

Are you finished, good.

The entire mess that Australian Cricket finds itself in wasn’t Hilditch’s fault, no man has given his employers more reasons to fire him than Hilditch.

You could argue that Steve Smith playing as a number six was Hilditch’s attempt at Cricket Australia assisted seppuku. It was the loudest and saddest cry for help, tear and urine stained Hilditch publicly wept, and no one did a thing.

Waugh and Border are not known as sympathetic men, but rather than cover up for Hilditch’s many, many errors, they have done the kindly thing and gently pushed him out.

Sure it would have been more fun if Border broke into his house at 2AM and beat him to death with a Duncan Fearnely, but sadly those days of Australian cricket are over.

Hilditch’s demise is a weird moment for me; I spent so much time pointing out his various farcical selections and statements, that I almost feel sadness on his departure.

In many ways, Hilditch was my muse, he was one of the reasons I wanted to blog in the first place, and sometimes I felt as if he was saying things just for me.

It’s a personal relationship between asshole provocateur and the dude that pisses him off. I mean, without Hilditch, where would I be, who would I be, what world would we live in.

Hilditch has changed me, he made me become the bitter sarcastic shell of a man I’m proud to be. Without him I’d still be all those things, but he amped them up, and gave justification for feeling that way. I can never thank him enough for that.

As for me changing him, I’d like to think that hasn’t happened. I think of Hilditch as pure form of Hilditch, unaffected by any outside elements.

For better, and mostly worse, the world needs a Hilditch, even if Australian cricket never did.

Buy my version of the argus review, it’s funner.

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Jun 10 2011
11 Comments
aussies

Katich cuts well

I was going to write a post here about who I would have sacked before Katich. Then it got serious. Then it got wordy. Then I uploaded it at Spin.

After I wrote it, I went and listened to Simon Katich’s 20 minute press conference.

Katich speaks far more eloquently than he ever batted.  However, like his batting, it’s the counter attacking that is what’s best about this.

When he says, “I know how they operate” that’s a dig at Cricket Australia being cowardly, opportunistic and slimey, but he doesn’t call them any of that.  It’s subtle, but far better than any of his awkward nudges to the legside.

Then he says that Sachin Tendulkar was written off a few years ago by one of our selectors.  Wow. Grag Chappell is now in hospital getting Katich’s foot removed from his ass.

There’s obviously more on the selectors, because he has just been dropped and he is clever and articulate enough to savage them quite well.  Because it’s on the selectors where this could come off as a what about me douchjuice, that he doesn’t is a work of art, 17 men squad, part timers and the spinning carousel make this a wonderful effort.   The way he spreads the love so it’s not just about him as a work of art.

You could imagine some players with Katich’s past coming out and stating that Michael Clarke was involved because of the old sing sing choke choke situation from a few years ago.  Katich could have used that, but no, he’d rather deflect that and let others think about it.

I don’t agree with everything he says, especially when it’s that Australian cricket selection has always been about performance at shield level.  That wasn’t the case for Steve Waugh, Ian Healy, Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath or Michael Clarke’s selection who were all picked on potential.

But that’s the good thing, you can disagree with his points and be of the opinion that he should have been dropped, but you can’t argue that he has exposed Cricket Australia’s lower points that they often pretend aren’t a problem.

King James Sutherland has already disagreed with some of this, but you can’t spin what Katich has said, because the people are on his side and in his press conference he didn’t make the mistakes that most players do.

People have called his comments angry, and they are, but this isn’t some rant, the man sounds calm and calculated, which is like how he batted, and all of this make his comments all the more trustworthy.

Cricket Australia have been cut open beautifully by Katich, which is ironic, but he never played a beautiful shot on the field.

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Jun 10 2011
13 Comments
aussies

Revenge of the Krab

There was once a time when Simon Katich choked Michael Clarke for not celebrating a win long enough.

Now he has been told he is not required or good enough to get into the list of best 25 cricketers in the country.

According to some media outlets, he’s angry.

I bet he is.

I imagine he has made a list, and those on that list will be dealt with in an ugly yet effective way.

Simon Katich’s death list may never be found, but in the next few weeks we may start hearing stories like this.

David – found naked in a bathtub having been force fed 52 cans of beer, still in the can. Boon’s body is a lumpy mess, and his moustache has been carved off his face with a knife.

Jamie Cox – a corpse is found in a local men’s hairdressers having been stabbed with tiny blunt scissors over 18614 times. It doesn’t make the national news.

Andrew – a transsexual prostitute corpse is found in a lawfirm office, it’s been strangled, or shot, no one is sure, and the story keeps changing.

Greg – the head of a man is found, near by is a wide bring hat with razors on the brim.

Michael – the body of a man is found at a trendy cafe on a sydney beach, it’s quite clear to officials that it’s been choked by an Australian flag.

Personally I think Katich should have been dropped, but if I ever meet him or have any contact with him at all I’ll tell him that his dropping was the biggest mistake I’ve seen by Australian selectors, then I’d buy him a beer and tell him how I used to troll some cricket blog who used to make fun of him.

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May 18 2011
5 Comments
aussies

Mitchell Johnson’s Zombocalypse

Last night I had a dream about zombies. I’m not sure why. I haven’t been watching more zombie films than usual lately, just [rec] and the Walking Dead, which and both of those were over a week earlier. This was an actual dream, it’s legitimately not made up. And is probably the longest dream I’ve ever had in that it seemed to start when I first went to bed and finish when I woke up.

 

I was in the middle of a zombocalypse, although the problem is you don’t know their zombies until they’re trying to bite you.  It’s like a real zombie attack would be, you start with confusion over why a bunch of junkies are trying to bite you.

Once I got the picture, I ran off from the zombies, they were the slow moving kind because even in my subconscious I like to pay homage to the originals.

In that sort of weird dream way I saw a house up a hill and made my way there. Probably because it was double story house that reminded of night of the living dead.

In the house were 8 different people who never really got implanted into my memory; this meant I knew they’d die.

We green our own food and had two permanent guards stationed outside.

One bad night we lost one person.  He was eaten in front of us as we defended our house.

To stop this happening again we put tight string around the perimeter of the house at waist high, in four different rings, with bells attached So that zombies would ring four different bells before they got close. And if a guard saw or heard the zombies they could also ring the bells directly to get us all up quickly.

It worked for a while, but they must smell you, because the first attack is only two or three, but then there’s 4, or 7, then 20. Before long we were having four people on patrol, then six. It didn’t matter, you couldn’t sleep anyway. You were more useful outside the house half asleep because you can react quicker.

We lost two more one night, and one of my fellow bleeders gets bit and I have to shoot her in the head.  She’s a young girl, but I do what I have to. After that night we started to fight. Everyone had their own plan, but none of them are that feasible.  We just continue to get more scared and tired.

One night while I’m asleep I hear them break in into the house. I don’t know what has happened to the rest of them.  The only way out is to fight down the stairs past about 5 zombies.

Zombies are slow, but they’re not easy to kill. Hitting them hard enough on the head to stop them is not easy and in a hall or stairway you can’t get around them easy. Also, you get tired from hitting them, taking zest out of your next shot, and swinging a cricket bat straight down is not something you’ve learnt to do from a MCC coaching manual or a lifetime of playing cricket.

Somehow, mostly with luck, I get past them all and once I’m in the open I manage to slip away.

For weeks I roam around barely keeping alive, killing the odd zombie, eating whatever food I can find.  Quite often it was raw dead birds.

One day I see what appears to be a young couple stacking up zombie corpses out the front of a house.

I go over, but when I get close the guy takes out a gun and points it at me.  Soon I realise why, I’m skinny as fuck, probably look like a psycho, have some zombie’s guts on me and am holding a samurai sword in one hand and an old Duncan Fearnley in the other. Not sure what it was a Duncan Fearnley, I’ve never used one.

Eventually they trust me and I help them with the bodies that they are building up to mask their smell.  It’s a good theory.  And for a couple of weeks we live pretty comfortably.

Then one day a zombie just turns up, and over the following days more come.  We kill them, but once 7 turn up at once, I know this place isn’t safe, I try to convince the couple, but they don’t believe me.

Now I’m walking down a train track and I think almost look enough like a zombie to get by.  Until I pass a bunch zombies eating a dead dog, and they smell me.

They come over and I attack them.  It’s not as easy as it first was.  I have to hit them three or four times to get them to re-die.  I can no longer run around, I’m barely quicker than they are, so I end up with one on top of me inches away from biting me.  I mange to roll him over and then break his jaw with the handle and smash him over and over again with the bat, even long after he’s stopped moving.

I don’t even hear the helicopter suddenly I’m being whisked away to a safe haven by the government.  They ask me what I do, I tell them I’m a cricket writer that leads them to sitting me next to someone I recognise.  I might look like shit, but this guy looks fresh as a daisy, he even smells like he’s showered and he looks very refreshed.

“Hi, I’m Mitchell”

Jarrod.

“Nice to meet you.

How the fuck did you manage to survive?

“Don’t know really, I just did”.

You don’t have a scratch on you, did you even run into a zombie.

“No, managed to avoid them, lucky, huh?”

Fucken cunt.

 

And then I woke up.

 

 

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