T20 Cricket World Champs Update from WoBNewsWire

LONDON, 5 JUN 2009
Report from WoBNewsWire with AAP, SMH and CHiPs

Andrew 'Roy' Symonds has been flown back to Australia with his international cricket career again in tatters after more off-field indiscretions.

"It is with regret that I advise you tonight that Cricket Australia have stood Andrew Symonds down from the Australian team that is currently in England for the World Twenty20 championship and will be coming home this evening," said CA chief executive James Sutherland, a very dull man with not a lot of friends who probably plays golf and drives a Saab. "The decision has been made after Andrew has in the last 24-48 hours broken a number of team rules, which are clearly set out in our Official Team Manifesto and Operational Guideline Manual Volumes One through Twenty-Nine."

The all-rounder, cult hero and heroically enthusiastic pisshead returned to the team hotel after a warm-up match against New Zealand on Wednesday (AEST), but buggered off without telling anyone and got on it. It is a rule that team management and security be notified every time a player leaves camp, which constituted a breach. In previous eras the breach would have been to go out on the turps without letting anyone know so they could come with, but such conventions have been New-Broomed into beige-washed oblivion by the current CA administration, none of which would know their arsehole from the elbow without reference to a comprehensive atlas of human anatomy.

Symonds is believed to have had a few drinks while attending a gathering with teammates to watch the rugby league State of Origin on Wednesday and to have breached personal behavioural terms imposed as part of a rehabilitation program prescribed by Cricket Australia, i.e. bellowing 'QUOINSLAAANDAAAAA' in the faces of the NSW representatives, then dropping his strides when 'Eagle Rock' was played on the jukebox and lighting his own farts. The Australian team also attended a dinner hosted by the Professional Cricketers Association at the Royal Garden Hotel on Wednesday night, but there is no suggestion that Symonds got into any trouble during either incident, because he was still too fucking slashed from the night before.

Sutherland would not confirm these specific nature of the breaches but added: "In isolation, those breaches are not significant, but in the context of commitments that Andrew has made to his teammates and CA over the last six-to-12 months, they are the final straw.

"I'm disappointed in Andrew, but at the same time I'm disappointed for Andrew - there's no joy for me ... in fact, I'm quite sad about it," Sutherland said patronisingly, trying to suppress a smug David Brent-esque smirk. This position appears in contrast to team sources who have told WoBNewsWire in confidence that Sutherland has been waiting for months for Symonds to fall off the wagon again so that Sutherland can play him the new message tone he'd downloaded for his wanky new phone, an excerpt from Karate by Tenacious D: 'You broke the rules, now I'll pull out all your pubic hair... you motherfucker.' This, according to reports, is the kind of pathetic nerdy shite which amuses the Prince of Beigeness, because he's a small-minded gimlet-eyed tosser who cares more about the opinions of sponsors (who, it should be noted, actively encouraged the evolution of Roy The Larrikin, despite it meant the disintegration of Andrew Symonds the Drunk, because it was good for marketing to AB males, only to hypocritically abandon Symonds once they had extracted sufficient marketing mileage from him) than the presumably somewhat important mission statement of Winning Games Of Fucking Cricket.

Team management decided to boot Symonds off the tour after consulting with the Senior Leadership Steering Committee Management Group consisting of Australian captain Saint Ricky of Ponting, a smug little shit-eating dwarf who of course has NEVAAARR done anything other than be morally whiter than fucking white his ENTIRE CAREER; coach Tim Nielsen, who apparently does something to do with helping the team win matches, despite recent evidence to the contrary; and vice captain Lara Bingle, a post-op transsexual best known as the 'Who the bloody hell are ya' chick. This group recommended to Cricket Australia that Symonds be sent home so as to continue the Twenty20 campaign without further disruption to the team, and most importantly, to their marketing appeal to the key demographic of 30-55s with disposable incomes and no discernable personality who like their sports heroes clonally dull and as dismally unspectactular as their own grim, turgid, featureless white-bread lives.

CA will also apply to the International Cricket Council, the game's governing body, to replace Symonds on the Twenty20 squad with Victorian all-rounder Cameron White. The ICC is set to question this move, not on the basis of the legitimacy of the change, but on the basis that any bastard with eyes can tell White is a spectacularly useless cricketer whose career would be best served learning a trade, or something that doesn't involve batting, bowling, fielding or not having stupid fucking hair.

Symonds is expected back in Brisbane around noon Saturday AEST.

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LONDON, 6 JUN 2009
Report from WoBNewsWire with bacon, eggs and a coffee

Cricket Australia (CA) called an extraordinary press conference today to announce changes to the official team squad for Australia's first match of the World Twenty20 Championship against the West Indies on Saturday (AEST).

CA Chief Executive of Sponsorship Liaison and Being Beige As Fuck James 'James' Sutherland, seated beside fellow Senior Leadership Steering Committee Management Group co-chairperson Saint Ricky of Ponting, was expected to announce the addition to the squad of Victorian no-rounder Cameron White in place of troubled Quoinslaaandaaaa Andrew Symonds, who was expelled from the squad Thursday as a result of his drinking problem - his problem, reports Nauters, being he wants to have a drink and no bastard will let him.

The normally slick and media-savvy Sutherland appeared tense and under obvious pressure as he addressed the waiting media, reading from a prepared statement. "Yesterday Andrew Symonds was dismissed from the Australian cricket team with the intent that he fly back to Australia immediately. However I can announce that as a result of negotiations with Andrew and his management that Andrew will remain with the team and his position in the squad is safe. He will not be replaced by Camer.... ahhh fucking hell they're nipping at my balls, no no NOOOO!!!"

With that a visibly agitated Sutherland sprung to his feet. The assembled media were shocked and horrified to discover he was pantless with a home-made chicken-wire crab trap tethered to his bare crotch by way of gaffa tape. His less-than-massive junk was, at that moment, being fought over by a pair of mature Japanese mitten crabs, caught that morning from the Thames estuary and clearly quite hungry. Saint Ricky of Ponting simply continued to stare cross-eyed at his hands, occasionally gobbing on them and rubbing them together, as he liked to do when things were going appallingly badly (eg Ashes 2005, Perth and Melbourne Tests 2008/9) and he was pretending he was somewhere safe and secure again, like back in special school in Launceston.

"That'll fucken do," declared a voice from side of stage. "Teaspoon of concrete and harden the fuck up, princess. I'll fucken take it from 'ere ay."

The voice belonged to a barrel-chested, shaven-headed, dark-skinned male with white zinc cream across his lips, wearing lairy boardshorts and a Broncos training singlet. The spearfishing gun under his arm was casually trained on the cowering Sutherland. The newcomer was clearly recognisable as Andrew Symonds, former Australian all-rounder. He leant over and plucked the desk mikes from their mountings, addressing the gathering with the casual nonchalance of a stock agent at a Charters Towers cattle muster.

"Yeah g'day," Symonds began. "Youse are probly wondering what the fuck's garn on ay. Yeah nah we've had to take matters into me own hands. This bunch of fucken jokers" - he indicated Sutherland and Ponting with a dismissive wave of the speargun, which sent the CA chief executive into another paroxysm of fear - "are fucken fucken up Strayan cricket with their fucken key performance indicators and their target fucken demographics and fucken what-not, none of which has two fifths of fuck all to do with actually winning fucken games of cricket... sorry, 'scuse me fucken French, ladies present and all." It wasn't clear whether he meant the SMH's Chloe Saltau or the cowering corporate whore Sutherland. "Particularly this hypocritical fucker 'ere."

Ponting spat on himself and chewed a thumbnail. "Me?" he asked pensively, as if this was the first point he'd realised he might actually be the one at fault here (see also Ashes 2005, Perth and Melbourne 2008/9)

"Yeah nah yeah mate, YOU. You and your fucken holier than thou attitude. Who was it that got his fucken head punched in at the Bourbon and Beefsteak back in the fucken day after trying to fucken pick up that post-op trannie?"

"Lara?"

"Nah you fucken Downs syndromer, Carlotta."

"She was a bloke??"

"Jesus fucken Christ. This is what I'm talkin' about," Symonds remarked to a sympathetic media audience. "Anyway, I've had a word to the boys and we've basically staged a coo de tard. That's French," Symonds explained. "Means I'm fucken takin' over, ay."

Learned idiot Crash Craddock of the Murdoch gutter press put his hand up, equal parts bravery and stupidity.

"The fuck do you want Crash?"

"Erm... Andrew... Roy... maaaate... does this mean you're the new Australian captain? Coach? CA head honcho? Can you clarify what your new role will be?"

"Yeah nah good point. Yer still a fucken wanker but. Yeah... call it strength an' conditioning coach, ay. I'm in charge of the fitness program. Nutrition, tapering, rehydration after training, that sort of thing." He flicked a thumbs up sign off-stage and was underarmed (in traditional Australian fashioned) a can of XXXX. "Cheers. Yeah Warnie's our new captain. Shoulda got the fucken job in the first place but this lot of douche bags decided he didn't fit the fucken corporate profile. Gilly's our vice. He'll keep and open the batting with Haydos...."

"Are they not both retired??" piped up one of the insufferable Indian media pricks who pissed and moaned endlessly about Symonds' sledging during the recent Indian Premier League.

"Mate were you fucken watching the IPL?" Symmo challenged. "First and second top-scorers in the comp, beat the piss out of all your fucken superstars - didn't look too fucken retired to me pal." He fixed the bespectacled former spinner with a glare that would have melted concrete, before continuing. "Yeah nah we've generally gone for experience over youth, you could say that. Mainly because the youth of Straya can't fucken play cricket, judging by the piss poor performances the current farrago of busted arseholes have knocked out since my lot retired, or got retired by this lot of fucken selectors. So Gilly and Haydos will open. Stewie Law'll bat three with that fucken stupid lookin' double sided Mongoose bat which he reckons is gonna be the shit. Mark Waugh at four. Boof Lehmann's at five, he's coach. Bevo's at six batting cleanup, I'm at seven, Warnie's at eight - talked him out of opening, he backs himself but, as you'd expect. Then we've just bought the rest of the XXXX Gold beach cricket side off Channel Ten - Damo Fleming, Dizzy and Kasper. Fucker hoops about like no bastard's business in that game, if they can land that fucking thing on a length on yellow astroturf they're specials in this."

"So Andrew, what will become of the real Australian team?"

"We ARE the real Australian team, you poofter," Symonds bristled, clearly taking all his self-control not to loose a speargun round into the solar plexus of the pompous Peter Roebuck. Roebuck's smug grin had more to do with his longstanding fantasy of Ricky Ponting being fired from his position, as he'd agitated for during the Indian summer of 2007/08, though the prospect of Saint Ricky's replacement being the hated Warnie rather than Roebuck's beloved Lara Bingle was heinous to his mindset and ruinous to his complexion. "This lot of fucken dull-arsed sponsors-pets, non-events and interest-free-zones are being held in a five star hotel suite under heavy guard - we've armed the Fanatics to the teeth. They're currently being entertained by Mr Cricket [Michael Hussey] doing video analysis of highlights of great examples of running-between-wickets of the last twenty years." A bemused grin creased Symonds' zinc-smeared lips, as Boof Lehmann (coach) and Andy Bichel (permanent 12th man) ambled on stage with cans of XXXX in one paw and spearguns slung from the other. (Boof would have preferred West End but they didn't brew it locally of course, not having water as putrified as the Adelaide tap water which gave West End that particular septic-mud piquancy.) They frogmarched the horrified, self-soiled Sutherland and the self-spitting, still-largely-oblivious Saint Ricky off stage.

"Any further questions?" Symonds asked of the media.

Most hands in the room shot up.

"None... good. Our media liaison officer is Jimmy Maher - that and indigenous affairs spokesperson - so if you got anything to ask hit him up for a yarn, he'll probly be bending an elbow in the front bar of the team hotel, aka the official team meeting room." He burped resolutely and tossed the crumpled can at the Cricket Australia logo in the background. "I'm off for a slash. See yers Sat'dy."

"That's got to be the most astonishing, unbelievable thing I've seen in world cricket in years," marvelled one hack quietly to another, quietly, as they filed out of the conference suite in the shell-shocked aftermath. "Got to be, yeah? There's no way that's going to be topped today."

"Don't be so sure," said the other, brandishing his iPhone. "Final score from Lords. England just lost to the Netherlands."

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Real Australian XI Squad for T20 World Championship
as of 6 June 2009, Beer O'Clock

SK Warne (Vic), Captain
AC Gilchrist (WA but really NSW), Vice-Captain and wicketkeeper
ML Hayden (Qld), Chief Catering Officer
SG Law (Qld), Chief Sledging Officer
ME Waugh (NSW), SP Bookie
DS Lehmann (SA), Team Coach
MG Bevan (NSW), Executive Director of Arsey Final-Over Escapes
AR Symonds (Qld), Pisshead
JP Maher (Qld), Minister for Indigenous Affairs and President of Valiant Owners Club (Coon Division)
DW Fleming (Vic), Sobers of the Sand
MS Kasprowicz (Qld), Friendly Ghost
JN Gillespie (SA), Cos He's Dizzy (His Head Is Spinning)
AJ Bichel (Qld), 12th Man In Perpetuity
GD McGrath (NSW), Batting Coach and Tax-Deductable Charity
SCG MacGill (NSW but really WA), Sommelier-In-Residence

Coach: DS Lehmann (SA)

Team Manager: DC Boon (Tas)

Spiritual Leader: KD Walters (NSW)

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Keep in touch via WoBNewsWire for live reportage on the progress of the Real Australian XI in the World T20 Championships, as it happens.

The Doctor is OUT.