Pick the fat kid

You could tell just by watching him bat that Phil Hughes didn't want to open for Australia. Maybe he did a bunch of years ago, when he first got the gig and peeled off a couple of dazzling centuries early-on. But not now. Not after being dropped and recalled and dropped and recalled. Not now that the massed ranks of Opposition Quicks have figured out that his technique against the short ball is calypso-interpretive at best and cat-on-a-hot-shithouse-roof at worst. And not now that he's desperately, woefully, arse-reamingly out of form. Look for him down the unattractive end of the 2010/11 Sheffield Shield runscorers list - second-bottom, just above Cameron White (sorry, Bear freaks.) Hughes' four-day record this year: four matches, seven innings, 118 runs at 16.85, top score of 48. In a team that has won five from seven and only lost a match when all the baggy green caps came back to distinguish themselves in state cricket. One suspects that tells you all you need to know about the overriding competence of the NSW players who have been picked in the current Australian side.

Short Phughes got picked to replace the injured Katich on two counts - well, three if you count the fact he's from NSW - his last innings for Australia, which was an 80-off-fuck-all knocking off a win against NZ in March, and the fact that every potential opener in state cricket is shit this year. Seriously. Go through that list of Shield runscorers and find me one who's actually in form. You'll fail. Until you find the fat kid. Mark 'Kegs' Cosgrove. Six matches, ten innings, 510 runs at an average of 56.66, top score 159. Fresh off 100 and 86no for Tasphobia against WA. And the fat kid's an opener. The fat kid should have been OUR opener.

We'll assume the Cosgrove narrative is taken as read - lefty, arsey, former CA-groomed prodigy, cult hero on account of being fat, drunken and usually in trouble. In short, the Australian Jesse Ryder. Everyone loves Kegs Ryder, particularly when he's smashing the oppo rather than smashing his hand in pub toilets at 3am. Cricket may be the last international sport where the fat drunken bastard - he who stands in for the fan on the couch or the hill more presciently than any other - still has an equal shot at heroism as the skinny, buffed, roided up little tweek who's been training for this since he was six. Other than darts, perhaps.


So why pick the fat kid? Form, ability, technique - unlike any of the existing openers he actually has some. The art of opening a test innings appears to be lost, dying or ignored by selectors worldwide - the majority of openers these days are converted lower-order bats (eg Katich, Watson, McCullum) or arsey technique-free slogsmiths (Hughes, Sehwag, McCullum again). Time was when your number three was your best batsman, but your openers were the guys with the most solid technique, primarily in order to see off the new ball. Not sure you'd back the current encumbents to see off a pie and sauce. Whereas I suspect your money would be safe with the fat kid.

And yes the fat kid has had Previous Disciplinary Issues. All those giving a fuck, raise your right arm. Unless I'm in a room full of amputees I'm taking it that you too remember when Previous Disciplinary Issues were the first box to tick on the checklist for permanent Australian selection. Let's not forget the current side has a captain - at least it appears that's what he's there trying to be - whose Previous Disciplinary Issues include getting his head punched in at the Bourbon and Beefsteak after trying to crack onto Carlotta. Allegedly. Somehow browsing too long at the team hotel buffet doesn't seem to be a sackable offence.

But that all gets us to the main reason to pick the fat kid: he's actually likeable. Does this matter? Should it? You tell me. You're paying the wages of the Australian team, the selectors and the board. Without interested parties watching them go around on the box or on the park, and buying the crap their sponsors pedal, this whole professional sports thing falls resolutely on its coight. Cricket Australia's administrators should live in desperate bowel-tremoring fear of the Emperor Has No Clothes moment when all and sundry decide 'Fuck this, I'm more than slightly over watching a bunch of unlikeable overpaid overpampered peroxided Narcissists fuck about failing on my coin for five days while pissing on the nationally treasured legacies of Bradman, Chappell, Border and Dizzy Gillespie's double ton against Bangers.' Truth be told the last time a team was this hated they were wearing England shirts post-World Cup, after yet another failure to prove 1966 was a desperate fluke, trying to flog their autobiographies (or as Joey Barton put it, 'I played shit, here's my book'.) From both mission-critical perspectives - performance and PR - the Australian team needs a saviour. And, as the cult followings previously attached to the likes of Boonie, Merv and Boof illustrates, it had best be a fat one who likes a beer.

Of course none of this matters. Our next Test series is months away, and it's in Bangladesh. By the time we actually face credible Test opposition - Sri Lanka in August, followed by the Saffers away and the Indians at home - Katich will be back as opener and everyone will have forgotten our pitiful capitulation as an Ashes-contending Test playing nation, on account of having just suffered through our pitiful capitulation as ODI World Cup holders. The touring side for Bangers will have the same array of busted-arse, over-publicised, inked-up, interpretive-haired embarrassments as per programme for much of the Ashes series. Cricket Australia's selectors - at least it appears that's what they're there trying to be - will be safe in the assumption that by the time the creams are dragged out of the back of the wardrobe again, the viewing public will have neatly forgotten just how horribly fucking shit the current side are at playing Test cricket against even modestly competent opposition, much as Gerry Harvey is undoubtedly expecting his cretinous superstores to be once again chock-full of bogans with memories like goldfish ref. his recent online shopping GST bollocks, clamoring to apply for credit they can't afford to buy big-screen shit they don't need and could get cheaper via the Magical Inter-Google.

Bollocks to that. Pick the fat kid. And anyone else who's in form, rather than anyone else who fits the form set by the PR template.

The Doctor is OUT.