Well, fuck-a-doodle-do. The Australian Test Cricket Team has certainly gone and made a right mess of themselves over the weekend, haven’t they?
Steve Smith, Cameron Bancroft, and David Warner‘s little flirtation with a casual bit of blatant pre-orchestrated cheating has cast a shadow over cricket in Australia the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the unseemly underarm incident of 1981.
And while the fallout from that is gripping the nation, your average punter (Ricky Ponting, in this instance, would probably be your well-above average Punter) has been whiling away the time by doing the one thing Australian audiences do best in the face of shameful scandal: Take the ever-loving piss out of it on the internet
Yes, folks. The jokes have been coming in thick and fast from quick-witted observers, all eager to get their shot in as quickly as possible.
Predictably, folks with no interest in cricket decided to weigh in on proceedings by quite loudly proclaiming how much they do not care about cricket.
Low-hanging fruit? Sure. Creative nonetheless? Yep.
This is literally all I know about cricket & I refuse to look into it further. pic.twitter.com/Pg23W2ECp7
— Zoë Coombs Marr (@zoecoombsmarr) March 26, 2018
How am I going to explain this to my kids?
(As in the rules of cricket I don’t know how it works.)
— Tom Ballard (@TomCBallard) March 25, 2018
https://twitter.com/Briggs/status/978030154969628673
10 points to the Lord Briggs for invoking the holy text aka the incredibly good 1990 live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. Casey Jones knows what the score is.
Elsewhere, some on Twitter went bananas, riffing on the incident and the all-consuming reaction to it, and the calls for blood that followed.
Steve Smith suspended for insisting One Hand, One Bounce is a proper rule and then refusing to give the ball back because” it’s his”
— chris (@garflyf) March 25, 2018
If Steve Smith is not charged at The Hague on Monday, then I can’t help but believe that the ICC is merely an instrument of Western Imperialism
— Ryan Cummings (@Pol_Sec_Analyst) March 25, 2018
Cricket Australia release swatches for new team uniform. pic.twitter.com/7poCVGglYQ
— Tom Gleeson (@nonstoptom) March 25, 2018
https://twitter.com/Rob_Stott/status/978058999747682304
This is Cricket’s JFK moment. The ball is JFK, Smith is Lee Harvey Oswald, I am the car, the road is integrity- the grassy knoll is a grassy knoll, and the CIA? Correct- they are the cartoon duck that walks across the screen sometimes
— 👍 (@takethetwoo) March 25, 2018
Good gear, that. That little cartoon duck owns.
Over on Facebook, it’s been a banner 24 hours for the Cricket Related Simpsons Quotes page. It truly is their time to shine.
Ultimately though, the best jokes were the ones that made their way into real-world settings. And in that regard, here’s your 3-2-1 rankings:
In third place, this cheeky lad at the ground in South Africa asking Nathan Lyon to sign his sheet of sandpaper.
Nathan Lyon refuses to autograph the kid’s sheet of sandpaper, with a smile on his face. #SAvAUS #Sandpapergate pic.twitter.com/5f1LKC9Uku
— Baksteen Nel (@seriyaaz) March 25, 2018
Now that’s a ballsy move right there, young fella.
In second, the always-glorious NT News running this surefire Hall of Fame-worthy headline on their front page this morning.
OH DEAR … TOMORROW’S FRONT PAGE pic.twitter.com/gnudHxk8zs
— The NT News (@TheNTNews) March 25, 2018
Someone call the Walkley Foundation and tell ’em to shut everything down. Journalism’s not gonna get any better than that.
But in first place? This scorching hot sick burn from a Dymocks, of all places, torching the embattled Smith to within an inch of his life.
That is a spicy meatball. The subtlety of it! The many layers! The placement of the book is a huge enough blast, but the books either side of it make this a full-course roast with all the trimmings.
Never change, Australia. Never ever change.
