Ricky Ponting called for silence, banging the Justin Langer Memorial Gavel hard on the table. He replaced the item in its matchbox. Nobody stopped talking.
"Bloody shut up, you blokes," shouted the skipper. "I've about had it with you lot. And Mitch, stop picking at that tattoo, you'll only get it infected again."
"Now, the time will soon be coming for me to think about options beyond the game of cricket, and having been all over the world to play the game, I have decided to become a travel writer."
There was a murmur of astonishment. Johnson stared with his mouth open, looking baffled and a little hurt.
"Surprised, Mitch?" asked Ponting.
"No, skip, he always looks that way," said Ben Hilfenhaus.
"Of course," said Ponting. "Now, as any fair dinkum Aussie knows, reading books is a pretty ordinary way to go on. And God knows what writing them makes you."
"A loser?" suggested Doug Bollinger.
"Could be, mate," said Ponting. "But needs must - I can't go on with the cricket forever."
Michael Clarke coughed loudly, and practised looking serious and leader-ish in the mirror.
"As I was saying, I'm going to try a bit of the ole writing," said Ponting. "My first book will be Ricky Ponting's Rough Guide To England. Luckily, all of you lot are going to help me write it."
Bollinger raised his hand.
"It's all right mate," said Ponting. "We'll get someone else to do the actual writing. So what have we learned about England?"
"It's always cloudy?" suggested Bollinger.
"And that means that everyone tells you that you have to do bowling good and they put you in trouble if you can't," said Johnson.
"It's full of dangerous youths who try and mug you," said Marcus North.
"Like that Mohammad Aamer kid," agreed Ponting.
"I didn't know he was English," said Bollinger.
"He's not," said Ponting. "Mind you, who's to say that the Poms won't have signed him up in time for The Ashes? If that happens, I'm definitely getting into the author game full time."
