With the AFL season starting this weekend, most of Australia is focused on their club’s match-ups, finishing their Dream Teams and lamenting the fact that this signifies winter is well on it’s way. But this year, the end of summer is tainted with questions about the Australian Cricket team and the madness circling around them.
It started with the retirements. The world said goodbye to Ricky Ponting and Mike Hussey, which was hard enough, but then the selection committee looked over key players for the One Day and the Twenty20.
Things got worse when the team went abroad for a few international test series. With terrible performances versus Sri Lanka, and not versus India (in progress), [eople are actually shocked at the show put on by the players. Not even Fox Sports, who generally worships the ground the cricket team walks on, rated their performances very harshly.
Then there was the banned players.
Since they weren’t performing well (and even when they are), team members are required to turn in evaluations of the game and their individual performances after the test. Four players simply ‘forgot’ to do their evaluations and coach Mickey Arthur suspended them for a test. One of these players was vice-captain Shane Watson, which caused some eyebrow raising in the cricket world. James Pattinson, Mitchell Johnson, and Usman Khwaja were also suspended, two of whom can be key players in winning a test match.
The cherry on top was when Shane Watson ran away back to Australia to see his pregnant wife, in the light of his suspension. Sure, she was about to pop and he was just trying to be a good guy (Shane Watson should consider himself lucky that a hormonal, on her birthing bed woman let him go to India in the first place) but it was still frowned upon and people were unimpressed.
Finally, Mitchell Starc has injured himself and will be out for three months as he needs surgery on his ankle.
Now with the Ashes on the horizon, everyone is concerned about the condition of the team since it seems to be falling apart at the seams. What are they going to do?
(Photo Credit: Twitter)
