Toxic

Fantasy Bob has noticed a blizzard of publicity around the newly published book by Mitchell Johnson in which he describes as toxic the dressing room atmosphere in the Australian team under the captaincy of Michael Clarke.

Clarke and Johnson in happier times

As FB well knows, as publishers vie for the Christmas trade, a skipper is always at the mercy of this type of sensationalist revelation as this extract from a forthcoming volume of memoirs shows:

Yeah I remember the first time when I'm a junior cricketer and I have to play under Fantasy Bob's so called captaincy like it was yesterday.  Course, I should have guessed what was coming when my Dad leaves my kit at the gate.......yeah, like I had to carry it to the dressing room myself - and I'm like I'm shocked - I mean if your Dad can't carry your kit into the dressing room what are Dads for anyway.....but he's like I'm off laters buddy ........so I drag my bag to the dressing room and the atmosphere was...well I'd never experienced anything like it...the linament that Fantasy Bob is slapping on .....made my throat catch .....made my eyes water...Dad is well right to scarper it was like toxic...like the Government should do something about it or something.....so I sit beside the other juniors... we're all holding our breath...the kid on the end is turning purple already....then I'm looking around cos my Dad's said I could learn from listening to the older players ....like he knows anything.... cos all there is is a lot of chat from FB about Gustav Mahler... so I text the junior next to me to ask him who this Mahler man is...is he like the opposition opening bowler or something... but my pal texted back to say he's just some old guy from some sixties band....like the Beatles or something...then FB is up and says time for the toss and we can all breathe again and this other senior player says better get ready to field then...me: I thought we would bat - him: you don't know FB, last time we batted first he had had hair on his head....so we go out to field and FB like says to me you just stay close by me ...OK I says you want to chat about bowling changes to me ...no he says I want you to run after the ball when I miss it...so like finally he asks me to bowl and I say like I'll have 3 slips and a gully... and he's like OK everyone on the fence ...and I get 3 wickets from catches in the deep... and then I'm like batting and FB is at the other end and he says you run when I call and I'm like thinking doh he can't run at all what's he on about... but he calls me for three runs at least once an over and I'm like well shattered but I score the winning run....

Yeah.  Like it was well toxic.