They are:
1. I always start from the assumption that I don't really know what's going on. Whenever I've had first-hand experience of a situation that's been in the press I see how much more there is to it than what is reported, so I assume that about any report. It's not conspiracy on anyone's part, it's just the nature of the beast. It's one of the reasons I don't read the sports pages that much. Drama, drama, narrative, archetype, drama, inevitably limited by space and partial information. I prefer to read glossy magazines where the confabulation is shameless and hilarious.*
2. Having said there's no conspiracy, you don't think that assignment was cooked up by Mickey Arthur as a way of getting rid of Watson, do you? God, who'd want him, I think a lot more of Clarke now I've heard he doesn't get on with old Swotto. Surely they pick him under sufferance because, exasperatingly, he delivers, but he hasn't really done so in India. Shame Arthur's cunning plan caught a few others in the net.
3. Wotto has inevitably magnified drama because a) he's a blow hole, and b) he was going home anyway because his wife's having a baby, so moving it up a bit and going now has created a whole extra layer of theatre that wouldn't necessarily have been there in other circumstances.
4. Everyone says "it's like they're schoolboys", but I think it's Wendy Crew in the Herald's letters page today who in fact nails the vibe. It's like "the necessity to include your company's 'mission statement' when tendering for a contract". Any corporate employee (as a free-wheeling mercenary I thankfully only hear about them) will be miserably familiar with the need to come up with a personal narrative and vision and account of "what they contribute" on a regular basis. Justin Langer would not have helped (or would he? "My plan, Sir, is to keep my head and see the sunrise"). Those cricketers are lucky. They could have been divided up into small groups and given craft materials to make a bird that reflected their image of the future of the team.
My friends made this.
Or, if they were under Steve Waugh, they might have had to write poetry and read it out to the rest of the team (oh, to be a fly on the wall). Some league players submit sexcapades. I suppose it's new to actually be axed for not coming up with the goods, but a) I guess that's the threat that lurks behind all of these touchy-feely (steady, league players) reeducation programs and one of the reasons they're so maddening and b) we don't really know what's going on.
*I'm reading a really great book called "Being Wrong", by Kathryn Shulz, so maybe I'm sensitive, but it introduced me to a fantastic concept to describe the phenomenon of expressing confident opinions and having intense discussions about topics we really don't know much about: we are all contributors to a magazine called Modern Jackass.
