Mickey gets the chop

The Australian cricket team is about to try and wrest the Ashes back off England. But they will be doing it without coach Mickey Arthur; the Sydney Morning Herald reports:

Cricket Australia has sacked head coach Mickey Arthur on the eve of the Ashes.
The former South Africa coach, whose contract was due to run until the end of the World Cup in March 2015, was informed of the decision over the weekend.
It is expected that he will be replaced by highly rated Queensland coach Darren Lehmann who is in England and has just completed a coaching stint with Australia A.
Arthur came in for heavy criticism for his role in standing down four players, including then vice-captain Shane Watson, during the Test tour of India in March for failing to complete performance feedback on time.
There has been a school of thought that the South African was not tough enough to oversee the generational change in the Australian team, and he has been made responsible for a team culture that has gone backwards this year.
The latest examples were David Warner’s twin run-ins with trouble - first on Twitter, then in a bar in Birmingham - which led to the opener being suspended until the first Test at Trent Bridge.
Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland was furious at Warner’s conduct and understood to be also angry at the handling of the bar-room affair - in which Warner punched England’s Joe Root - by team management.
The decision comes as all of Australia's squad converges for the first time in Taunton in England on Monday, for their first pre-Ashes tour match, against Somerset beginning on Wednesday.
Arthur was one of the major appointments in the aftermath of the Argus Review, which was ordered after Australia lost the 2009-10 home Ashes series to England.
He was then coaching Western Australia but was selected after a worldwide search for the newly created head coach and selector position - former coach Tim Nielsen did not apply for it - on a three-and-a-half-year contract.
Cricket Australia's only immediate response was that an announcement would be made late on Monday, in conjunction with a media conference in Bristol. The latter will - tellingly - be attended by CA chief executive James Sutherland.
The Ashes series begins on July 10.

It's probably not stretching things to say that these are desperate times for Australian cricket. The retirement of players of the stature of Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey have left a huge hole in the team. 

But it seems as though the malaise in Australian cricket is being laid at Mickey Arthur's feet. Homeworkgate has come back to bite him.

If Cricket Australia thinks that sacking Arthur is suddenly going to make Australia the best cricketing side in the world, we have a feeling that they are going to be bitterly disappointed. The current players need to take a good look at their attitudes. For all the criticism of Arthur treating them like children when they didn't do their homework, they're big boys earning big pay-cheques, and they should have a far greater level of self-discipline.

If we were betting folk, we'd be off to the TAB to get a healthy wager on England to retain the famous urn; we can't see any way in the world that Australia can win the series in England, with or without Arthur. In excising him, Cricket Australia has in all probability overlooked the true malaise affecting the team.