Australia: The Hilditch Situation

'Yeah, okay, you've busted us,' said Andrew Hilditch earlier today, speaking exclusively to this blog. 'I'm surprised no-one's spotted it before. Our entire build-up to this Ashes campaign has been a Situationist prank. Well, you've got to do something to shift the tickets, haven't you?'

Hilditch made his comments after appearing at the 'grand unveiling' of Australia's 666-man Ashes squad under a piece of tarpaulin near the Sydney Opera House, an event attended by a cast of up to 30 Situationist actors who huddled beneath umbrellas and expressed ironic regard for Australia's chances in the forthcoming series. 'One of the guys in marketing at CA is a bit of a fan of Guy Debord, and he made the suggestion,' Hilditch said. 'We actually thought we'd be found out sooner. I mean, we did appoint Greg Chappell as a selector while the boys were in India. I was pissing myself when we came up with that one...'

'The clues have all been there,' Hilditch went on. 'We needed to break the spectator's passivity towards the spectacle, so we did stuff like persuading Mike Hussey to get his average down and picking Nathan Hauritz. Then today we chose every State player we could think of whose surname begins with an 'H' EXCEPT for Phil Hughes! Bloody ripper!'

'And I got Mitch Johnson to play a Grade match at the weekend, and the nutter bowled 11 wides! As you know, he's a big Asger Jorn fan, and he's spent the past couple of years establishing an almost perfect paradigm of alternative inadequacy'.

'Anyway,' Hilditch concluded, 'we might knock it on the head after this round of State games. After all, we can only go on pretending to be like England for so long...'

That new-look Australian XI for the SCG in full

Chief selector Andrew Hilditch today announced the following XI to play South Africa at the Sydney Cricket Ground on January 3, and every Test after that until further notice:

Langer

Hayden

Boon

M Waugh

Ponting

S Waugh (c)

Gilchrist

Warne

Hughes

Gillespie

McGrath

'We've simply picked the best eleven cricketers in the country,' Hilditch explained. 'Age is no barrier for an Australian team. If you're good enough, you're old enough. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to walk a long way into the bush and start screaming'.