It’s good I don’t anymore as I think today would have killed me.

Warne being fined 50,000 benjamins for knocking an official who on his profile claims to have won a title on his own once is worth a post just so you can talk about how the lost 50Gs might mean some of his face goes back into a normal human facial structure. Although it could stop him from spending his spare 50 large on  cricket betting to make a few extra dollars on the way out, or, it could force his hand to make the money back.

Tony Greig has come out against India ruling the world.  Perhaps they didn’t grovel at his feet enough when he was involved in the rebel league and made out with some fat cash from the ICL.  Greig also called Lillee a bit of a fairy, which is rich from the guy who wore a postman helmet to face him.

Hansie Cronje is in the news again (I mean really, this guy gets more press than Princess Di or 2pac) now he’s winning the Siyabakhumbula Tribute Award.  This award means he’s changed the landscape of the country, I do hope that isn’t a meta joke about his plane crash. And if you’re disgusted by my behaviour on that last line, the devil made me do it, and now I’ve found God and shit.

Stuart Clark is retiring from cricket to become a cricket administrator, but still reserves the right to play if NSWales need him.  It’s a very similar situation to Michael Jordan’s role at the Washington BulletsWizards, except Stuart Clarke isn’t cool, and won’t sell many Sydney Sixers shirts. Clark also retired from international cricket in one of the least needed statements in human history.

Danish Kaneria can’t play for Pakistan because of being too close to the grift Mervyn Westfield is accused of. Zulqarnain Zully Q-Dawg Haider may also not be allowed to play for Pakistan because he didn’t want to be involved in a grift. “Wanna bet” is the most loaded innocent phrase you can say in the Pakistani changeroom right now. The PCB is like every coke addled bi-polar girlfriend you’ve ever been afraid of.  I expect my lawsuit is on the way, Ijaz?

Stuart Law called England the number 1 team in the world because Sri Lanka are playing them.  Managing expectations is only a press conference away.

Also, just for something different, some in the West Indies doesn’t like someone else in the West Indies.  It might not have been in the news, but I’m sure it’s accurate.

We are so fucken stupid as a species that I for one cannot wait for the day our alien masters come here and make us into food, pets and handbags for the bored middle class aliens who don’t have to work because they have designed machines to do everything they need to do in life.

This post is stupid.  Painfully so.

Because this isn’t even the first time I’ve written a post like this, I’ve done them for Warne, Gilly and Hayden. Probably for others as well.

I get sucked in by the stupidity of others and just feel the need to comment when I really should be doing something more meaningful with my time like cutting off my nipples to sew them onto a mouse.

Great players retire, get dropped or die.  It’s a simple concept.  Most of them retire.  They do this because they no longer want to play the game at the highest level, no longer can play the game at the highest level, or are just sick and tired of training.

Warne retired at the right time for him, that he and McGrath left at the one time created a massive chasm bigger than Paris Hilton’s, but they both had to retire and at that stage Australia had Lee, MacGill and Clark.  It wasn’t as if they left Australia cricket with a homeless guy who yells at tourists.

Now, four years later, some people want Warne back.

Actually, it isn’t four years later, they’ve being saying it on repeat on every single day since he left, because people are morons.

Warne made them feel warm and fuzzy.  Well, they felt warm and fuzzy when he played.

That was because he was a major part in what was a brilliant cricket team.  As good as he was, it wasn’t just Warne.  Australia had three of its best ever bowlers in one side for years, they also had a bunch of great and very good batsmen, some capable back up bowlers and a cricket changing wicket keeper.

This team had these people warm, fuzzy and non sexually (mostly) satisfied.

Now that feeling has gone, and these people, like the simple morons they are, want it back.  Well, you can’t have it back.

Forgetting the fact that Warne is 41, hasn’t bowled more than 4 overs a game in the top level of cricket for years, has a average of 36 at the WACA in his prime, has 9 other jobs, and wouldn’t want to tarnish his name by coming back, he just won’t come back.

At the very least he’d have to make himself available for Victoria, come back from London, and make sure he really could bowl 30 overs a day.

None of these things are going to happen, regardless of whether he rules out coming back or not. He just isn’t going to play at the WACA, and even if he did, he wouldn’t be winning the game for anyone other than England.

Asking your very retired players to come back, every time you team struggles is about as stupid as you can get.

It is sports version of having a bad night with your current girlfriend, ringing up your ex in a drunken horny state, then appearing at her house at 4am professing your undying love for her.

The chances of it being successful are very slim, the chances of you ending up looking like a complete ass clown are odds on.

Just writing about this has made me dumber. Because I know this is a nonsense media and idiot related issue, and yet I still write about it.

Just reading this has made you dumber as well.  Because you also know that he isn’t going to play and that this whole thing is just a colossal waste of your precious time.

You could have spent your time reading about something important, taking your nan flowers, helping a young person with their life or clipping the  toe nails for a local person with no arms. You’ve let down your community, family and species.

Instead of making a difference you came here and read this stupid ranty article written by some idiot who calls everyone else an idiot about something that was never going to happen in the first place.

It’s non-issues like this that keep us all so distracted we let the world become the sort of place that allows reality TV stars and cardboard cut out politicians to take over.

You and I are the problem.

So, the international season in Australia has come to an end, and I’m drinking to it. Not because of the unbeaten Aussie summer. Thrashing two mediocre teams is hardly cause for celebration. No, because it means the end of the most annoying experiment in cricket viewing since, well, ever.

Bloody heart rate monitors.

What, I mean what, is the point of this idiocy? The whole point of introducing any sort of technology into a sport is to make it in some way better for the spectator. HawkEye, HotSpot, slo-mo cameras, they all serve this purpose. But what is the freaking point of a heart rate monitor?

It is not as if most of us are incapable of noticing that your heart rate goes up when you are running and it is no great logical feat to suss out that it might go up a bit more if you run and then hurl a small projectile 22 yards.

And it’s not even as if they put them on the interesting players, fer chrissakes. What is the use of putting a heart rate monitor on Mitchell Johnson, unless it is to give his mother heart failure of her own? How about sticking one on Chris Gayle, so that we can tell if he is really that laid back, or just clinically dead? Or on Shane Watson, to see if he actually is 98% straw? Hell, if we are being really interesting, strap it to Steve Smith and see if he’s yet mature enough to walk past a woman on the boundary without all of the blood rushing to his groin?

No, the only conceivable use for this technology is to fix it to the commentators. Watch Mark Nicholas’ bpm rise every time he passes a mirror. Measure Warne’s excitement as a tray of pies goes by. Do what the heck you like with it, just get it off my tv screen.

McGrath, Waugh, Hayden, Gilchrist, and Ponting.

There is a name missing, SK Warne.

Warne probably would have won one had he played one-day cricket between 03 and 07. In 06 he was Australia’s best test cricketer and won an award that said that, but not the AB. Because the point system is allocated for all international games for the Allan Border medal, Ricky Ponting won was the winner that year.

I don’t agree with the system, the best test player should win the major award, even if that is Collin Miller.

This year the best test player was Simon the Krab Katich.

He was Australia’s most consistent player in the voting period. By last summer he had turned from an embarrassing eyesore to Australia’s best batting eyesore, and he kept that up for the year.

The fact that he won the award does tell the story of Australian cricket in 09. A recycled player well into his cricket twilight averaged 48 with the bat and was Australia’s best test player.

Australia’s best player in all forms of the game was Shane Watson. In one day cricket he was destructive with the bat and ok with the ball. In test cricket he was savage with the bat and handy with the ball.

Other than his occasional moments of monumental stupidity, which we all have (I once shaved my head but left my fringe), he has been a force.

It hasn’t always been pretty, during the year he has traded metrosexual insults with Jimmy Anderson, made missing a test hundred an artform, abused Gayle like a 3 year old would, and stalked Phil Hughes spot like a CIA assassin.

But the big bastard is the best-performed Australian cricketer in all 3 formats of the game (had he played in more tests he probably would have won the test award too).

They give you the medal for that sort of hi-jinx.

He deserves it, doesn’t mean the whole world will suddenly warm to him.

Ofcourse the real winner of the night was Haley Rich Bracken (whose name I had to look up when writing this) for wearing a mermaid costume that should help her singing career.

Buy the book, get a t-shirt, or donate to the whisky fund.

Like Ganguly doesn’t have an employee to wash his face.

The stunt double pretending to be Warne is doing a great job.

Has anyone ever read the paper with more intensity.

The IPL is back in India.

The IPL is back, so are the weird ass ads.

My wife is out with a girl she has already described as ‘cute’, and I have an overactive imagination;

I’m supposed to be co-writing something with a workaholic, I’ve written jack shit for the last 5 days and I’m worried he might come for me with a sharpened pencil;

My t-shirt drawer needs rearranging, because I’m not sure if my ‘SuperFred’ shirt is still wearable or not.

But then I made the mistake of turning on ESPN Classic and watching ‘Cricinfo’s Top Ten Most Hated Australians’, and it made my blood boil.

I hasten to add that this is not because it featured Cricinfo’s own Andrew Milller, who I feel sorry for because ESPN always contrive to make him seem like he just got off the special bus (I know he hasn’t, because the aforementioned cute girl is one of his friends).

It’s not even because of the presenter, who is one of those instantly dislikable people that you feel obliged to punch at least once per syllable. (I’m not naming him. I object to him having the oxygen of oxygen, let alone that of publicity).

It’s because the entire show was so fucking wrongheaded it wasn’t true. Haydos at number one? Come on! In the imaginations of one or two hacks, maybe, but most England fans couldn’t give a toss about the bible-bashing, barbeque-basting big guy. He was just one more Aussie to get rid of, a little bit obnoxious maybe, but nothing more.

Ditto Merv at number two. Only the truly brain dead saw him as anything other than a comedy villan. He was a decent bowler who had the odd good day, but ultimately was known more for his tache and ability to swear than as a cricketer.

Steve Waugh bored the pants off us, both on and off the pitch. Warne we feared, not hated – we may not have approved of his private life, but we all wanted to see him bowl. And Greg Chappell was lucky to even be in there, given that you seemed to need to have been seen on colour tv to be considered at all.

The real howler, though – the mistake that devalued the entire show – was having Border down at number 9. We hated AB in England, hated him with a passion Warne could only dream off. He was arrogant, obnoxious, a man who frequently seemed to go against the spirit of cricket. You won’t find anyone who laughed harder than I did when he was bowled by Richard Ellison on that glorious August evening in 1985. And yet he could bat you out of a game with ease, even when playing in one of the most talentless Aussie sides in history. God, he was annoying.

The show also lacked some of the other real hate figures from the past. Where was Chappelli? Bradman? Boon, even? If this was supposed to be the ten we hated, I dread to think who they think we might have liked.

Couldn’t play footy, shit at school and he was terrible at cricket.

Then he started getting laid, and the power of the vagina lifted him beyond a mere mortal.

The more women he slept with, the better he got.

It was if all vaginas had morphed into one powerful vagina, and they had chosen Shane as their hero, and every time he entered one, he grew.

Eventually the vaginas grew tired of Shane’s attitude to women.

So they found ways to bring him down, but he still had the talent, and their attempts might have kept him down in the official world, but in the eyes of the fans he was already a legend.

Eventually the mage vagina grew to love Shane, even with his flaws, and they live happily ever after.

But how many people thought Stuart MacGill would as well?

“John Buchanan’s mantra has always been that if the players look after themselves, the results will look after themselves,”

“In 2005, Australia had a very, very good side, all they needed to do was tailor-make a game plan, and we didn’t. We didn’t spend any time on their players or conditions.”

“What won England the Ashes in 2005 was their bowling, and if you look at it now, we got (bowling coach) Troy Cooley and they got John Buchanan.”

“Troy Cooley won England the Ashes and John Buchanan lost it for us.”

“I don’t begrudge Buck for trying to make a living, but his coaching record in England isn’t crash hot. He lost the Ashes and had a stint with Middlesex that also didn’t work out.”

The best bit about all this isn’t that MacGill has come out against Buchs, it’s that he did so in the Murdoch press.

How angry must he be at Buchanan to speak to them.

Perhaps it is because he didn’t get a game that series…

True.

Luckily foxsports is on the case.

Like this time last year, the only way to fix the Australian team is by picking ex players who are performing in the IPL.

Last year it was Shane Warne and Adam Gilchrist, this year Matthew Hayden has been added to the list.

It seems that if the Australian team fails, the only way forward is back.

Look at all the runs Gilly is making, never mind his keeping.

Haydos is smashing the ball everywhere, forget his form in 2008.

And Shane Warne is still killing everyone, who cares that he doesn’t really want to come back.

Articles about how great these guys are doing in a semi domestic league are counter productive and tinged with bullshit.

Yes Hayden is making runs, but he has the weight of failing for Australia taken off his shoulders, he is facing 3rd and 4th string Indian bowlers in most of the attacks and it’s an Entertainment league

It has a scheduled ad break for fucks sake.

I am glad the old Australians are doing well, like I was that Ian Harvey was the player of the tournament in the ICL, and that Michael DiVenuto continues to kill in County cricket.

Not sure I want any of them to come back though.

This was the same tournament that Shane Watson dominated so much last year it could have been renamed in his honour.

Hayden, Gilchrist and Warne have all been warriors for Australia, but lets not compare the new breed to them, lets just let them play.

Let the dead be the dead.

We will remember them, no need to reanimate them.

Their plan was to devise a cricketer, so talanted, and so likeable, that would win the Ashes regulary then allow them access to these secrets.

Ofcourse the Nazi’s were defeated in the 40s, but their scientists went to America with the help of the CIA and continued to invent new wondrous technologies.

In the late  early 90s several Nazi Scientists were still working in America…