Homework failure

              

  When he strides to the crease at the start of his innings, it looks not only as if he has emerged from the pavilion but also stepped straight out of central casting.Watson's failure to hand in his homework, along with the bowlers Mitchell Johnson, James Pattinson and batsman Usman Khawaja, was met by a fourth-form style punishment: suspension from the test team to face India in the third test match.In the space of a dramatic few days however a talented, if injury-prone, all-rounder who should truly be the poster boy of Australian cricket has become persona non grata in the national set-up.It is easy to imagine him performing surf-life saving duties at Bondi, or in younger years, playing the high school heartthrob on an afternoon soap. After Australia's humiliating defeat to India in the second test at Hyderabad - where they became the first side in test history to declare in the first innings but then lose by an innings - players were asked to identify three areas of possible improvement.