cricket with balls

What sort of man is Shane Watson?

Don’t answer.

Not content with turning the Pakistani batting line up into his bitches, he also completely embarrassed his own bowlers with a display of bowling competency.

But to do it on the day the world should be bowing down for Murali, that is just unfair.

Murali had done what he needed to do, took the last wicket in a dramatic way.

He knows how to work a crowd.

Keep them interested thinking that it might just all go wrong, then after a protracted last wicket partnership take the wicket and let the crowd and team mates take over from there.

It was perfect.

The lighting was right, his family were crying, the crowd was roaring, his teammates carrying him and a seemingly slow motion celebration happening around him. All he needed was some music composed by James Newton Howard and a crane shot starting on a close up of his face before moving back to show the whole scene.

But Shane Watson is not a fan of bowlers who deliver the doosra, ask Saeed Ajmal.

And he knew that there was one thing he could do that would dirty Murali’s magic day, and that was him taking wickets.

Nothing ruins a magical day like Shane Watson’s bowling.

He is like rain on your wedding day, he makes everything wet and women cry because of him.

And he knows it.

Six wickets, talk about taking the piss.

Five at Lord’s was bad, but this was one more, scary.

Cricket just feels wrong when Shane Watson is taking wickets.

Before he went out to bowl he knew this was Murali’s day, and look what he did.

Disgusting behaviour.

Murali deserved better than that, Shane.

You pig.

From Clare Skinner.

There are many problems facing Pakistan cricket.

Senate enquiries.

Effigies.

Match fixing.

Spot fixing.

Shoaib Malik’s cuntoxability.

The Captain carousel.

Possible suspensions.

STDs.

Missing out on IPL gravy.

No home ground.

Opium.

Playing shit a lot.

All these things have affected Pakistan cricket in recent times.  But Pakistanis are resilient, they keep punching on.  It isn’t always pretty, and they usually fuck it up a bit, but bugger me if they don’t keep going.

Today that ended.

Today the hopes and dreams of that beautifully eccentric country were ended.

The killer of Pakistan’s plucky persistence was Shane Watson.

Ofcourse it was.  It all makes perfect sense.  For years we all wondered why Shane Watson existed, now we know.

Watson is here to end the Pakistan gene pool.

There can be no doubt.  It explains how he plays, how he looks, his general demeanor, why Australia were so keen to play him, everything.  He was sent here to end these people, and the bastard did it with that smile on his face.

As a cricket fan you might have grown to understand that at times, Shane Watson might make runs.  Not a lot of runs, and he might still give you a comical ending, but you know it could happen.

As a cricket fan the one thing you know won’t happen is Shane Watson cutting through your best batsmen like they are batting with breadsticks.  You know he won’t take a five wicket haul.  You know that, and that is what hurts.

It was horrible.  Watson was that dude from Indiana Jones, just taking out the hearts of Pakistan, not with his hand, but with his medium paced nonsense.

Akmal, Akmal, Afridi and even Butt succumbed to Watson.

Then he added a fifth, and that fifth gets his name on the board at Lord’s.  Right at the top because no other bowler has ever taken a five wicket haul in a neutral test match at Lord’s.

So if one day you want to know about the fate of Pakistani cricket, take the Lord’s tour and take a look at the neutral honours board and you’ll see

SR Watson 5 wickets

A monument to horror.

The ad is supposed to be about hair gel, but the middle section is well directed soft core porn.

There is also a section where Watson does the creepiest look at the camera since that chick in Paranormal Activity.

But the real reason I show this ad is because Aaron Finch is in it.

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.