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Gags flow over Aussie cricket 'homework' debacle
MEGAN LEVY
Last updated 17:03 12/03/2013
Cricketer Shane Watson had the perfect excuse to give Australia's selectors, according to some online jokesters, when he was in effect sent to stand in the corner with his hands on his head for not completing his cricket "homework" in India overnight.
The gags are flowing thick and fast on social media after it was announced that Watson and three other members of Australia's floundering cricketing team - Mitchell Johnson, James Pattinson and Usman Khawaja - would be stood down for Thursday's third test for a breach of team discipline.
The quartet had failed to complete written "homework", set by head coach Mickey Arthur, to deliver a presentation, by email or in person, on what they brought to the team in the wake of last week's embarrassing defeat in Hyderabad.
The move was supported by Australian captain Michael "Pup" Clarke, but has become a laughing stock on social media, where the homework debacle has been given the online spoofing treatment.
No longer the baggy greens, Australia's cricketers are being portrayed to as the saggy greens.
In one image doing the rounds, Shane Watson is pictured sitting despondently at a desk in a school uniform, grasping a pencil with his head in his hands.
"Homework due Saturday," says a note on the blackboard behind him.
Bart Simpson's famous blackboard gag, which features in the opening credits of each show, has been altered to repeatedly say: "I will not question Michael Clarke's authority".
Also creating debate online is what form the cricketer's homework was meant to have taken. Were they meant to do a speech? Maybe a PowerPoint presentation?
"Clearly only one man can save Australian cricket... Robert Gaskins, the inventor of Microsoft Powerpoint," tweeted David Tossell (@David-Tossell).
Former England skipper Michael Vaughan tweeted an image of a man he described as "Australia's new number 3": Bill Gates. The billionaire Microsoft founder is shown pointing to a screen which says: "Why I Should Be The Australian Cricket Team's Powerpoint Coach".
Poor Shane Watson has already copped it in the English press, where former English swing bowler Matthew Hoggard said he wasn't the "sharpest tool in the shed".
"Getting him to write things out and put them in front of the coach is not going to be his strong point," he told the BBC.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/cricket...mework-debacle