Review to a kill

Last night social media (OK, Twitter) exploded with a fury and angst I've personally not seen in a very, very long time. Outrage, shock, anger, grief, bitterness, wild fantastic threats of retribution... it was as though someone had violently shaken a Kubler-Ross Model magnetic word game all over the fridge door of the internet. It'd be hyperbole to call it unprecedented, but it was remarkable that in this case the Twitterverse screamed with one voice - differently accented, but same intent - that this was wrong, that this was appalling, that there was no way this could continue, that there was no way this could be allowed to happen in a fair and just world.

And, above all else, that Shane Watson is a fucking twat.

That an allegedly professional cricketer who appears to be in the side for his batting cannot figure out when he is and is not plumb leg-before-wicket and therefore determine the occasions on which he should henceforth not requet a review but remove himself from the premises is an issue beyond me - best check out @ajarrodkimber's take on it at Cricinfo instead - but the whys and wherefors are beside the point. We want solutions. How to stop this from ever happening again. And luckily for the universe, Your Correspondent is a Solutions-Driven Enterprise. Much like a Star Trek model which runs on Gatorade.

Plenty of fixes for the Decision Review System have been mooted - taking the right of appeal out of the players' hands and putting them in the umpires', for instance, which sounds great until you see what Super Dooper Rugby refs have been doing in a similar situation, with Steve Walsh asking for the TMO to check whether his hair was obstructed five phases previous to the play in question. Every other finessing or nuancing of the system will give you an equally borkenated result as we currently have. As a result, the most obvious fix for this is the most extreme, and the one I have grown to favour despite it being a position maintained by cricket's evil empire, the BCCI: bin the fucking lot of it. Cricket is a game played by humans in real-time, and should be umpired by humans in real-time. DRS has added nothing to the game apart from large volumes of wank and bollocks. Give it the arse and live with Aleem Dar's inevitable arsehatted fuckups the way we live with Phil Hughes'.

Of course, that won't happen, because reasons. So I'm offering an alternative solution. One of these.

Yes, it's a shock collar for dogs. My solution is as simple as it is elegant: wrap it around Twatto's neck and set it to zap the fuck out of him any time he tries to form a T-shape with his forearms. Problem solved. What I particularly like about this solution is that it's perfectly targeted to solve the issue at hand, without affecting anything else. A Specific Solution, if you will. That's an idea everyone can get behind, surely?

The Doctor is OUT.

Once, twice, three times a twat

Three-time Formula One World Champions don't grow on trees. Because that would be beyond be-leaf. To be a living three (or more) time world champion was and is pretty much the azimuth of world motorsport achievement. Even in retirement, the role requires dignity and gravitas, as per Sir Jack Brabham. Or gritty death-defying stoicism in the face of odds, as per Niki Lauda. Or tartan trousers and ready rent-a-quote availability, as per Sir Jackie Stewart. The role requires you to carry yourself with the statesmanship of a living legend and an ambassador for the sport.

Not all three-time world champions got that memo, however.

Sebastian Vettel won three Formula One World Championships consecutively between 2010 and 2012. Yet, if this photograph is all that remains as THE lasting image of his career, more the better. Sebieber has partaken in some deeply cretinous wacky-und-craaazy-guy stunts on behalf of his paymasters at Red Bull over the years, but this would have to rank amidst the deepliest cretinousest of them all. Of course, the takeaway we're meant to take away is that Sebieber IS a wacky-und-craaazy-guy and all that being-a-precious-twat in his day job is not relevant to the discussion. Problem is, his precious twattiness appears to be ramping up faster than Red Bull's stunt directors can invent wacky-und-crazy-guy things for him to do. Starring in your own crappy kung fu film only buys you so much PR gloss when your followup is to precious-twat-it-up by 'beating' your teammate with one hand tied behind his back by his team.

It's a fact that Sebieber will retire a three-or-more-times world champion. It's also a fact that the overwhelming majority of Anglophonic F1 fans will consider him a precious twat, and no matter of increasingly desperate wacky-und-craaazy Red Bull photo ops will change that.

The Doctor is OUT.