Did they select a bowling coach that was a former good ol boy in McDermott, Bichel or Gillespie?

Did they keep going with little known well respected first class coaches like Allister De Winter?

Or did  they for the first time in their history admit that perhaps they are not at the forefront of cricket coaching and Allan Donald, who has just improved Tim Southee’s bowling and pace, might just be the best option?

They chose McDermott.

De Winter has done a brilliant job with Tasmania, they’ve just won the shield title, their little known bowlers have stepped up, and he seems to get the most out of players like Maher and Butterworth who were weapons this year.

Donald’s coaching record was a bit more up and down, but he was coming off his work with Southee and New Zealand, he even kept Oram together for a whole world cup, which means he is good with sticky tape.

McDermott’s record as a coach is not that brilliant.  He’s worked with the Queensland side and academy, without the level of admiration or results that De Winter has, or without the international experience and results that Donald has.

Plus, McDermott has more baggage than a 1850s French Princess touring the world.

In his recent past there is a sex video scandal where he was blackmailed for reportedly eight months before telling the police.

Claims that he allegedly didn’t pay child support despite living the high life.

And the massive cherry on top is that he was the man in charge of a business that ended up owing people 40,000,000 AUD.

Yet, he was still picked as coach.

Good for him.  Hopefully he brings Australia to glory and manages to get his real estate developing back on track.

Not only was McDermott given this job, but another good ol boy was promoted.

Langer went from batting coach to assistant coach.

I like what Langer says about batting, But he has been in charge of an under performing senior batting line up for 18 months.

His words might sound good, but the constant cheer of the opposition supporters when Australia are “batting” drowns them out.

Would McDermott or Langer be employed in their positions right now if Langer was a plucky shield cricketer who never quite made it and McDermott only played a handful of tests due to injury.  Who knows.

I do know that it’s all beginning to feel like a job for the boys situation, and not for the first time there seems to be coaches in shield cricket (Shipperd, Arthur, Helmott, Berry and De Winter) who all seem more qualified for the jobs than Nielsen, Langer and McDermott.

Although we’d all like to see a Micky Arthur sex tape.

The enquiry to look into Australian cricket, that is run by former captains of McDermott and Langer, in association with Cricket Australia has so far got rid of the part time fielding coach, promoted the batting coach and picked a bowling coach ahead of at least two better options.

Australia was known for having the best and most sought after bowling coaches in world cricket, but could you imagine any other country employing Craig McDermott as their bowling coach? The ECB almost hired him as their bowling coach, and then they talked to him. Then they laughed.

It seems Australia cricket is in safe incestuous good ol boy hands.

Craig McDermott’s sex tape

Here is another dossier, whatever the fuck that means. Try keep this one private if you could. I came across this kid when looking for photos of myself.

This is some Indian kid, he is like 5 or something, but I already see some worrying signs, so I thought I would work him out for you in case he gets picked soon.

Yes he all looks pretty and shit, better than N Hauritz and all, but that don’t mean nothin in test cricket. Look at the amount of time he cover drives in the air, two short covers and a tight line could sort him out.

Later on in the footage he gets hit in the face, kid is a pussy, can’t play short bowling, work him over.

Did you see any defensive shots? No. Try facing a fired up Freddie Flintoff or Wasim Akram without the forward defence, you’ll lose your off pole in two seconds. Plays those wanky scoop shots as well, without a helmet, chance he would knock out a few teeth I reckon. Plays across the line alot, that is ok with a green fucken ball on concrete, try doing that to Allan Donald on a green wicket kid.

Kid seems to have the personality of an eggplant. Hardly smiles, frowns or does anything a normal person would do. You can work up some sledges around that. Also boys hate to be called girls, so call him one at all times, get in his head. No point callin him a poofter, he won’t know what one is.

Thinks of himself as a bowler too. He aint shit. Get in his face about how shit a bowler he is, really tell him about it. This might wound his massive ego, and he will play those shitty slog sweeps.

On another video I saw him get bowled Boof Lehmann style. Watch his face, he turns around, he looks afraid, daddy/coach issues I reckon. This is his big weakness. Find out the name of the person pulling the strings, and every time he plays a bad shot say, “So and So won’t be happy with that one, you have let so and so down there”, and shit like that.

Trust me this kid can be broken, he aint no Matty Hayden (who is?), but we must start planning now don’t ignore him just cause he is gnome sized.

He was clearly taking the piss.

a) because he wouldn’t be asked.

b) because he wouldn’t play.

c) because oh derr.

Please Mr Newspapermen, don’t fuck us.

If you feel the need, you can put puns in the comments.

Mr Onions was so excited by the news, he went forth and took 6 for 30 on an actual road at Taunton.

Durham had managed over 500.

After Onions had finished with Somerset they were all out for 69, with a bitter help from ex aussie Callum Thorp, and very little from Harmy.

It was a tremendous effort from Onions, I saw a fair bit of it, and he is a skiddy bowler at around 135 with a bit of movement, and every time I have seen him bowl he has impressed me.

I should be worried, here is a fresh talent from England who can obviously bowl and is about to get a warm up before the Ashes.

I’m not worried though.

Not even a little bit.

Why?

While Somerset got bowled out for 69, there was one batsman came in at first drop, and never went out.

He made 32* and looked tougher and better than any of his team mates.

His name, Justin Langer.

And while the Somerset batsmen, including ol’ blue eyes Marcus Trescothick, looked like shit, Justin just nuggeted it out.

In unrelated news, Phil Hughes made another hundred today.

Rumours, innuendo and scandal.

And no, I’m not talking about the Trescothick/Vaughan cuckold rumour (which i don’t believe, no michael slater joke here).

I mean real cricket rumours, like Justin Langer is a chance to be the next coach of England (not Australia, that would be stupid).

Let that soak in down under for a second.

Ok.

I usually (rarely) like to state the good things about someone before launching an attack on them.

Justin Langer was the toughest batsman of the modern era, he enjoyed being hit by a ball, and he would prefer to face Ahktar to Scott Styris.

He got the most out of a severe lack of skill, and was part of the Born again Steve movement.

Tough and made runs, good things.

But Coach Langer?

Can he even speak, generally it takes him 3 minutes of incomprehensible babble to get out some sort of point, and often my head hurts.

His brief appearances as commentator were horrible, Mark Taylor seemed quite well spoken in comparison.

And while I am sure he has knowledge as a long serving test player, I never heard him referred as a tactician.

He was never even thought of as captaincy material.

And he has been hit more times in the head than Muhummad Ali and Joe Brugner combined.

Is this the man England need?

Fuck no.

But maybe I am rating coaches on the modern scale.

Nerdy dudes who like laptops and have their pants at Jimmy Smits levels.

Perhaps I should think about the old school coach who was tough as guts, bordering on criminally violent, and always quick with a witty swear laden putdown.

If England wants that sort of coach, Langer would be the perfect man.

Also Langer would be the ying to KP’s yang.

And then the coach is JL and the captain is KP, saves alot of typing for me.

If you were impressed that I went the whole blog without using the term brown nosed gnome, tell me in the comments.

If you are wondering what that means, so are most Australians.

It is some sort of award that is handed out to sportsman and politicians on days that are deemed important.

Justin obviously got his for the day I saw him tell a friend of mine that he would “fucken smack the fuck out of him” at the G after the little angry man had gone out.

Langer had a hate/hate relationship with the Victorian crowd.

Another day I swore he was going to jump the fence when I guy kept calling him a shit little dwarf.

In Australia this is the sort of behaviour that wins you our highest honours.

In couldn’t have been for his performances on the cricket field, as according to cricinfo, Langer, 37, played 105 Tests and scored 696 runs at 45.12.

What’s that, like 6 runs a test, not very Order of Australian to me.

But Langer will be happy with the honour, as he is now as respected a member of Australia as Dean Jones is.

I contacted Dean Jones for a quote

“Langer’s Order of Australia reminds me of a time I faced Qadir in Karachi on a raging turner, he thought he had me with a wicked wrong one, but I picked it and smashed it through midwicket for four, I really batted well that day.”

DM Jones c Ijaz Ahmed b Abdul Qadir 4

Jacob Oram has spent the best part of his career with the tag of “NP” never far away from him.

Jason Gillespie would play if he had a broken leg in the second part of the career to dispel the myth that he was.

Daniel Flynn better get used to it.

Cricket, test cricket, is not a place for the soft.

Facing Brett lee, Dale Steyn or Malinga is a test of courage.

Flynn got hit, he lost a tooth or two, he suffered concussion, he threw up for hours, he could not sleep, and he didn’t bat.

On the face of it he looks soft.

The truth is that he wanted to bat in the 2nd innings and he wasn’t allowed.

It may place too much importance on him to say it cost the victory, but it sure as hell didn’t help.

Educated cricket fans will know Flynn wanted to bat, but everyone else will label him soft.

And once pronounced soft, the label sticks for a long time.

Flynn looks anything but soft.

He looks like he should be beating up bigger kids at an arcade parlour.

While this will sound harsh, he reminds me of Justin Langer.

A scrapper, a fighter, a tough little bastard.

So why hold him back?

Australia spent Langers whole career putting him in harms way.

He debuted as a 21 year old against the Windies, and loved it.

He fielded at short leg for almost ten years.

He was told if he got hit in the head one more time he could die, he continued to play.

One time Langer almost got killed in South Africa by a Ntini bouncer, the Doctors told Ponting that Langer could not bat.

With 8 wickets down and 10 runs to get Langer padded up, Ponting told him he would try and restrain him from getting to the field, or declare on him.

Australia one without losing another wicket.

Langer said afterwards had Ponting stopped him from batting he would have never talked to him again.

That is the sort of player you want on your side.

New Zealand needs more players that will die to win a test match.

They have the bling, Taylor, Oram and Prince Brendan, now they need the grunt.

Flynn seems to be potentially grunt like, so let him play with a sore head, and see how he goes.

He still has plenty of teeth left.

We’re not fu©king @ssholes, mind you, but we are @ssholes.

Australia has one culture, winning, be it Grammys, Oscars or World Cups, we do it at an amazingly high level.

If we aren’t the best sporting nation on earth, we are pretty damn close.

There aren’t many sports we don’t have world class performers in.

Hell we even win winter Olympic medals.

Sport is not our religion, winning is.

And we are ruthless about it.

Friendships are lost.

Injuries are ignored.

Rules are bent.

The Opposition is intimidated.

Anything we can do to beat you.

It was the way I was brought up.

On the field we believe alls fair in love and war, sure we have moments where we are nice, even in sports, but we still want to win.

Afterwards have a beer with the guy you called a flaming @ss muncher, just trying to fire you up chance, want a cold one?

Now they are dobbing in cricketers, are they serious?

Either play like the @ssholes we were born to be, or straighten up and fly right, don’t put your feet on either side of the fence and ride it.

When the Australians first started trying to soften up their image I thought it was a joke.

A scientologist doesn’t covert to Judaism.

Why would they bother, it’s about winning, not being liked.

Lots of people like Sri Lanka and New Zealand, how does that work out for them.

Three or so years have passed and Australia’s new nice guy tag still doesn’t fit correctly.

How could it.

Ponting is a street fighter. The working class boy who loves a scrap, and would smack you over the head with a chair to defeat you.

Hayden is a Christian soldier. Like Dubya Bush before him, he is an evangelical fighter who doesn’t let knowledge or common sense affect his anger.

Roy is a black man from new texas (queensland), imagine the ©rap he has had to deal with his whole life. If that hasn’t made him harder than a teenager in a nudie club, I don’t know what would.

Hogg is 6 tests into a career, has no real talent, and is sledging guys with over 5000 test runs. Imagine what he did to the dogs on his old postmans route.

Before them were men like Justin Langer, who I personally saw threaten at least 3 Victorians with violence.

Steve Waugh, a man who believed in scarring the opposition for life and whose face broke Jason Gillespies leg.

And Allan Border, the man who told Dean Jones he was soft, as he threw up in India whilst making a double hundred.

No I wasn’t one of the guys Langer threatened, I’m not that silly.

In Aussie rules football I barrack for Collingwood, everyone hates Collingwood. That’s the way it should be. I couldn’t stand it if I barracked for a side that provoked no reaction.

I don’t know why this team decided to be liked, but I can only imagine it had something to do with making fat cash off sponsors.

Personally I think they make enough cash from cricket, they should concentrate on winning cricket matches.

If they really want to do something for their image, they can always do what Steve Waugh did, feed the starving limbless children.

Didn’t matter that Steve would have strangled an Indian to win a test on the pitch, because he did nice tings off the pitch.

India would love to be 2 zip right now, Bangladesh would love to win 2 tests.

Australia aren’t ever going to be completely nice, cause it aint in is.

So let’s drop the act gents, if nice guys finished first, we would have tried it already.

I can see it now, James Sutherland and Malcolm Speed having an important meeting about marketing over a bucket of chicken, while a girl with braces, wipes up the floor underneath a woman with 4 chins and seven kids who is devouring a record number of fillers.

Must be heart breaking for Warney to find out that he kept playing he could have got free fried chicken when ever he wanted it, plus the phone numbers of a bunch of skanky milfs.

I wonder how Stuart MacGill goes taking a bottle of wolf blass into his local KFC.

What am I saying, where he lives they wouldn’t have KFC.

Langer must be upset though, with his 23 children he could have moved in to KFC and kept his family happy for life.

Hopefully someone feeds Sharma some chicken, that boy could do with a meal or two and some pubes.

And until this series, he was the most out of form non English wicketkeeper in the world.

That has all changed now, and right at the moment the boy looks as though his mojo has returned.

It would be easy so say that any batsmen currently playing in India could make runs, and even easier to use Ganguly as proof of that theory.

I have another theory though, that unfortunately doesn’t bag Ganguly.

Akmal’s form turned around at the same time the media and selectors turned on him.

This is called Justin Langeritis.

Every time the angry little mans place was questioned, or Matthew Elliott, Jamie Cox, Phil Jacques or Michael Hussey were mentioned, he suddenly made an orifice full of runs.

It’s not a necessarily bad trait to have as a cricketer, it makes it very hard for selectors to drop you.

But I assume it’s a tiring way to play, its a lot of extra pressure and you are only a bad series away from being given the a$$.

For someone like Langer, who seems to like it when every one is against him, it probably seems like a good option.

I haven’t studied Akmal’s career that closely, but I do rate him as a batsmen, and occasionally as a keeper.

But if I had advice for him, and if he cared about my advice, and I had some way to contact him, I’d say, “there are easier ways to live your life than following the Justin langer model. Have you thought of the Adam Parore model, he was a champion, just ask him?”

And then he’d look at me with a confused look in his eyes.