Mitchell returns to break office harmony

 
Dane25 Roar Guru

By , 22 Jun 2012 Dane25 is a Roar Guru

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    Mitchell returns to break office harmony + enlarge image

    Australian captain Ricky Ponting pats team-mate Mitchell Johnson on the back after the umpires disallowed Johnson's wicket of England's Matt Prior, during day two of the Fourth Ashes Test match between Australia and England at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne, Monday, Dec. 27, 2010. (AAP Image/Joe Castro).

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    The incompetent and ham-fisted son of the boss has been away from work on an extended hiatus. Is it any coincidence that your daily grind has been so peachy in his absence?

    Using the photocopier without the need to extract fat branches of jammed paper, opening that important spreadsheet and not finding your monthly report has been over-struck by coffee orders and having a kitchen which hasn’t been frequently set ablaze by bungling attempts at toast.

    These kinds of experiences are basic workplace rights for most but gilt-edged privileges to you and your colleagues. These are the reasons why this period of time has been the most enjoyable and productive of yours and your business brethren’s employed life.

    But now the favoured plonker is back from his sojourn and the boss is going to bypass the bottom of the office food chain once again by planting him straight back in to his old routine.

    Straight back to getting the cushy window desk. Straight back to filling the stapler with thumb tacks. Straight back to using white-out on the computer screen. Straight back to eating all of the Tim Tams.

    It’s a display of zilch respect for the mini-kingdom of proficiency and its streamlined practices that you and your fellow honest toilers have managed to create without the burden of his clumsy blundering.

    Sound familiar?

    It mirrors the situation of the National Selection Panel stumbling over itself to shove Mitchell Johnson back in to the Australian ODI squad as quickly as they can for the tour of the UK beginning this weekend.

    The only difference is that he’s not the son of the boss. But he might as well be.

    Firstly, in his defence, Johnson was a pyjama incumbent before he ripped his toe giblets like a redundant contract while on tour in South Africa.

    He also has a worthy ODI bowling average (25.22) and a kit-bag chockers with potential match-winning traits and spare trendy reggies from his sponsor if any of the boys get too excited and need a mid-match brief transfer.

    However, those spectacular flashes of match-winning Mitch are as regular as a brass monkey’s bollocks, and when the chips are down, he has the mental resistance of a chocolate fondant pudding.

    We also need to consider the quality of life we’ve all been experiencing in his absence.

    The space he left in the team has been filled without issue and the world has moved on without him. Thanks for the yakka Mitch, but do we need to return to your attention-deficit scattergun pies?

    Let us also ponder the stretched conga line that has formed in front of him while he’s been icing his big piggy.

    Brett Lee, Patrick Cummins, Ben Hilfenhaus and Clint McKay join Johnson as the chosen quicks for the tour, but what about the casualties that have been flogging themselves on the track and backfilling admirably in his absence?

    Ryan Harris, Peter Siddle, Mitchell Starc and Doug Bollinger can all think themselves unlucky to have been rudely usurped by a bloke who was badly on the nose just before he broke down.

    If these blokes played like a wet soufflé before crumpling with injury, I highly doubt the same kind of greased saloon passage back into the national colours would be afforded to them. If anything, it would give John Inverarity’s big red pen a great excuse to have a run.

    Johnson should be made to set the world on fire again elsewhere and earn his call-up like all of the other gut-busting quicks in his division.

    Why hasn’t he been in the backwaters of English County cricket somewhere? At least he should be forced on to a couple of Australia A tours or heaven forbid, he could wait until next summer and lower himself to Shield cricket.

    If he can’t handle that, then give him a job in the Cricket Australia offices as a pen-pusher. Nowhere near the stapler though.