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Michael Clarke has launched an astonishing broadside against his team-mate Steven Smith ahead of this summer’s Ashes series. The Australian captain claims that Smith will struggle to make any sort of impact this summer despite now being ranked the best Test batsman in the world.
Responding to Graeme Swann’s assertion that Smith might get found out in English conditions, Clarke said simply: “We will find out in five Test matches’ time whether Steve Smith is good enough to have success over here.”
A hundred in any of the first four Test matches would surely prove Smith’s credentials, so it is striking that the Australian captain does not think the matter will be resolved before the end of the series. Clearly, he is expecting few runs from the team’s new number three prior to the fifth Test and presumably not even then.
Smith has not commented publically, but will doubtless be horrified to learn that his captain has such little faith in him. Alternatively, he may see Clarke’s words as merely the latest salvo in the proxy war for control of the Australia team. Clarke, threatened by Smith’s recent success and his status as heir apparent, may be trying to undermine his rival to firm up his own position.
Either way, the Australia camp is in obvious disarray with the cracks destined to widen like those in the Waca pitch on which they won’t be playing.
With suspicions that Chris Rogers and Brad Haddin may be suffering from senility amongst other age-related illnesses, things currently look bleak for the tourists and there are also rumours that Darren Lehmann spat on a penguin while at London Zoo this week, raising the possibility that the coach may come under fire for his boorish behaviour.
The penguin provoked him – it’s not a black and white issue like you make it out to be.
Get it? Black and white. Penguin. Yes? No? Yes? Huh, what do you mean I should leave now?
Lehmann said that sometimes in the heat of battle things get a bit heated and the polar ice caps melt.
Headline: “Cricket Australia directly responsible for global warming!”
Note the exclamation mark, not a question mark. They have admitted it. It has been proved.
With the benefit of hindsight, we should have realised that something as bad and ubiquitously dangerous as climate change could only originate from such an evil organisation as CA. They make FIFA look positively angelic.
Ged, they’ll still *say* it like there was a question mark.
But which side of the line was the penguin on?
I see Jason Gillespie has given them a new nickname. So I’ve written them a new team song to sing in their communal bath each evening. They need a new one anyway, because their old one has always been crap.
Who do we think we are kidding we’re not shit, sir
We will barely score a run
We’re all too old to be useful at this game
They have the youth so The Ashes they’ll obtain
So who do we think we are kidding we’re not shit, sir
If we think young England’s done.
Mitchell Starc goes round the park to average sixty-one
We’ll be all out by evening, we won’t even reach a ton
So who do we think we are kidding we’re not shit, sir
If we think young England’s done.
In other ‘news’….
http://nottingham.tab.co.uk/2015/06/19/englands-joe-root-spotted-absolutely-smashed-in-notts-night-club/
International sportsman gets drunk. Details at eleven.
‘A year since Gary Ballance took his top off’
Great, another thing I’m supposed to buy a card for presumably
Boorish? Is this where his nickname came from?
Was boof just a typo for boor that stuck?
Does anyone actually know where his nickname comes from? I thought it might be FOOP backwards, but it turned out I was wrong.
According to the googles, someone thinks that “it’s due to his uncanny resemblance to cult actress and Nineties video game TV programme presenter, Emily ‘Bouff’ Booth.”
http://sports.stackexchange.com/questions/2822/why-is-darren-lehmann-called-boof
I wouldn’t worry about it, much better that you direct people to your commments about the Bangle on the previous thread. Does your wife read your KC posts? If she does I admire her. I remember KC doing nude wrestling with her about 4 years ago but we never here if he has a significant other. His Mum doesn’t post much these days.
HMM, i meant KC doing mud wrestling with the Bangle, not your wife.
I’m still above ground thesaurusrus but don’t want to earn the Peter Kay epithet “If it’s not one thing it’s your mother.”.
hear*
>> rumours that Darren Lehmann spat on a penguin while at London Zoo this week
When asked for his comments on this monochromatic episode, G. McGrath replied… “5 – nil”
Re “The Bangles Debate” on this thread and the one before, I think that Bert has set the metaphorical trap and that Rus has fallen for it the very next metaphorical ball.
Bert’s “wooooo baby!” ejaculation is not, as Rus infers, the ramblings of an unreconstructed 1980’s male.
Not at all.
This is another of Bert’s rich, cultural references. Allow me to explain. Susanna Hoffs is married to Jay Roach, who directed the Austin Powers movies. “Wooooo baby!” is a clever reference and indeed a mimic of the unreconstructed sexist male stereotype so wittily lampooned in those movies.
Very amusing, Bert, well done.
No decent person, least of all Bert, would make fun of an acutely embarrassing wardrobe malfunction moment from someone’s youth, videoed and available on the web for all to see. Not least because all of us must have at least one of those videos out there somewhere…don’t we?
hahaha the caption