THE Australian cricket test team homework debacle has really topped off a joke of an Indian tour.
It’s a bit sad that four Australian sportsmen can’t even bring themselves to complete a three-part questionnaire on how good they are.
Back in the glory days when we owned most of the world championships in the sporting world, Aussie sports stars would love to gloat at just how bloody good they were.
We were called cocky, arrogant and excessively confident.
Now, Aussie athletes don’t want to talk about how bad their performances are.
All Shane Watson, James Pattinson, Mitchell Johnson and Usman Khawaja had to do was answer three questions on what they brought to the team, which they couldn’t bring themselves to do.
It begs the question, could Watto, Patto, Johnno and... Khawaj-o simply not be bothered writing about their attitibutes, or did they get half way through it and realise that they don’t really have much to offer at all on India’s dusty pitches and there was no point in continuing?
The naughty quartet didn’t even offer an excuse to Michael Clarke or Mickey Arthur as to why they didn’t submit their assignment. There was nothing about a rogue dog coming into their Indian hotel and chewing up their email before they could hit send.
No one offered an excuse about an extremely pedantic cleaner who chucked out their computer the day the assignment was due.
And from what we know, there wasn’t even a desperate plea that aliens from outer space abducted their homework, threatening the players that they would be terminated if they did not hand over their carefully crafted responses.
The luckiest man in all of this is Ed Cowan, who would have most certainly been dropped for this test if it wasn’t for half the team being disqualified.
Cowan’s batting justifies why people call cricket boring.
There’s one thing about shaping your innings and valuing your wicket, which a lot of the Aussie “batsmen” aren’t doing right now, but then there’s making 13 runs off 72 balls before going out leg before.
There is a big part of me that wishes Cowan wasn’t a private school boy. Then maybe he mightn’t have been so diligent to do his homework.
But the thing that makes me cringe the most is thinking about what’s going on over in the England camp right now.
A few months out from an Ashes series, the Poms are cruising against New Zealand in a settled line-up which has played together for about five years now.
In contrast, Australia is losing badly in India in a constantly-changing line-up with four players, including the vice captain, sacked for not completing an assignment.
The English test team must be absolutely laughing into their pints of warm beer right now.
