There has been nothing good to have come out of the last four days in the Australian cricket news cycle. The euphoria of having won the men’s T20 World Cup has evaporated. The excitement of reaching the pointy end of this season’s WBBL tournament has been buried. Even the selection of the Ashes squad and the A team squad has now been thrown into chaos. I had decided a few days ago that this podcast episode would have been about the racism row that has broken out at the Yorkshire County Cricket Club, and how it has been dragging in well known players and ex-players from all over the shop, and at some stage I may well get back to that. But the sudden news conference on last Friday afternoon where Tim Paine announced his immediate retirement from the Australian captaincy of the Test team has taken on the focus of all of the media since that point in time – some of it well researched, and then the usual flop media who are more interested in gaining clickbait than actual journalism. So, for what it is worth, you can hear my ten cents worth here in regards to how this has all played out, and what the further ramifications are, on today’s edition of the Casual Mankadder, right here on Thoughts from the Metal Cavern.