1 hour ago, daisycutter said:

i see your point but also mr legs.

whilst the icc standard ball tampering penalty of 1 match (+ some points and match fee) is manifestly inadequate, there is one hell of a big difference from 1 game for 1 person to nearly three years across 3 people (plus all the attendant $ costs that result)

I think too that this is the first case that the offenders have actually owned up. In the other cases all sorts of stupid claims of innocence were made and du plessis even appealed one of his charges.

some say that this instance was worse because  of premeditation and complicity. You can't tell me all the other ones weren't premeditated and as for complicity we just wouldn't know because they all claimed innocence. to me they were all just the same - a blatant breaking of the rules and cheating, full stop

bottom line, i think the final penalties were excessive and the players effectively punished also for all the perceived recent sins of the team

i don't doubt the public outrage was increased due to the general bad sportsmanlike behaviour of the team in recent years and that this was a major factor in determining the sentence (fairly or not). this makes ca all the more hypocritical as they have had adequate opportunity over the years to do something about this bad behaviour but chose to ignore it and therefore tacitly give it approval

I am with you DC. The ICC are giving out wet tram tickets, and Cricket Australia seems to be hanging people. The truth is surely somewhere in the middle --- what they did was wrong and worth punishment, but the punishment has to fit the crime (as Mr G and Mr S would say).  The other bit that smells a bit fishy to me is that according to Cricket Australia, there were only 3 people involved, and none of them were bowlers. Sounds weird, at best.

20 minutes ago, dieter said:

God almoighty, as though Australia doesn't doctor pitches. 

No, here in Oz we nurse them

20 minutes ago, dieter said:

What you blokes who believe the punishment is 'excessive' seem to want to ignore is that this was the final straw for the Australian Cricket Board. That it's the Australian Cricket Board who imposed the penalty, that the culprits mentioned above were sanctioned by the International Cricket Council

Now I may be right, I may be wrong - but ask my wife, this has never been known to happen - the ball tamper was the straw that broke the camel's back. In other words Cricket Australia have simply had enough of  the arrogant, imprudent, foul-mouthed, abusive, disrespectful bogan behaviour of so-called leaders like Warner, a man who seemingly had Smith under his thumb. It would seem to me that Warner has had an undue influence on this team and the long-suffering Board simply had to do something about it.

I feel sorry for Smith and Bancroft because they seem to be contrite. The real villain has been Warner and I hope he does not play for Australia again. 

Also, I accept Ian Chappell's view that the behaviour of the Australian Cricket team has deteriorated dramatically under Lehmann's Boofhead , head butting coaching style. He was a bad choice because he allowed Warner to believe he was invincible.

We should also keep in mind, that Warner's batting average since the whitewash of the Poms is 24.38. In other words, he's forgotten his bat needs to do the talking, not his contemptible foul mouth

i thought i said effectively that

i disagree that this was the final straw for ca . they have been conspicuous by their lack of action and concern for all the bad behaviour

nevertheless the punishment for ball tampering is excessive, it is not justice to punish someone for an offence based on what others have done previously and for what they are not specifically charged with. nor to be so markedly different from precedence

3 months (maybe 6) would have been more appropriate and still sent a harsh message 

24 minutes ago, daisycutter said:

i thought i said effectively that

i disagree that this was the final straw for ca . they have been conspicuous by their lack of action and concern for all the bad behaviour

nevertheless the punishment for ball tampering is excessive, it is not justice to punish someone for an offence based on what others have done previously and for what they are not specifically charged with. nor to be so markedly different from precedence

3 months (maybe 6) would have been more appropriate and still sent a harsh message 

That's one way of looking at it. I do ask though, how many 'message; or warnings does Warner need?

Also, there must have been a ground swell of resentment and anger and embarrassment at the antics of a team Warner controlled by proxy. And if he didn't control it, then why did neither Smith nor Lehmann pull his big head in?
LIke I say, this is a penalty despatched by Australia. There must have been good bloody reason for them to read the riot act.

14 minutes ago, dieter said:

That's one way of looking at it. I do ask though, how many 'message; or warnings does Warner need?

Also, there must have been a ground swell of resentment and anger and embarrassment at the antics of a team Warner controlled by proxy. And if he didn't control it, then why did neither Smith nor Lehmann pull his big head in?
LIke I say, this is a penalty despatched by Australia. There must have been good bloody reason for them to read the riot act.

was all public (australia) pressure. without it ca would have applied the wet lettuce, let's not kid ourselves

2 minutes ago, daisycutter said:

was all public (australia) pressure. without it ca would have applied the wet lettuce, let's not kid ourselves

Do you think they ran out of lettuce?

Also, if you've followed this on cricket sites I think you'll find it's not just Australian pressure. The whole cricket world has had enough of these bozos.

They've said, Nuff is NUff, if you don't mind, Mr Warner.

Edited March 30, 20187 yr by dieter

26 minutes ago, dieter said:

Do you think they ran out of lettuce?

Also, if you've followed this on cricket sites I think you'll find it's not just Australian pressure. The whole cricket world has had enough of these bozos.

They've said, Nuff is NUff, if you don't mind, Mr Warner.

Yep from the outset I said there is more to this than just the ball tampering.

Edited March 30, 20187 yr by old dee

1 hour ago, Red and Bluebeard said:

No, here in Oz we nurse them

We won't talk about the cosmetic surgery and the implants...

Who did our cricketers murder? I missed it. 

I heard some idiot on the radio yesterday say that the three involved and the coach will never be able to walk into a pub again.

The outrage is pathetic. I must have missed something. 

Edited March 30, 20187 yr by Ethan Tremblay

1 minute ago, Ethan Tremblay said:

Who did our cricketers murder? I missed it. 

Australian fair play.

WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!

11 minutes ago, Moonshadow said:

WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!

The Ethans of the world might find this of interest:

Bucket tipped on Aussie sledgers By Trevor Marshallsea May 29 2002   The image of Australia's world champion cricket team has again been tarnished, this time by a uncommonly detailed account on sledging by South African rookie Graeme Smith. With Australian cricket officials already in damage control over Adam Gilchrist's labelling of Sri Lankan bowler Muttiah Muralitharan as a chucker, a new sledging controversy has emerged after Smith broke the traditional reluctance of elite players to bring on-field sledging incidents into the public domain. Smith, 20, emerged from his first two Tests and four one-dayers at home in February-March complaining of "below the belt" verbal assaults from his rivals but vowing: "I cannot repeat what the Aussies said." Now he has - in explicit detail - in the South African edition of Sports Illustrated, with an account unlikely to be well-received in the offices of the Australian Cricket Board at a time when its emphasis on image has never been higher. As the ACB mulls over what to do with renowned cleanskin Adam Gilchrist for his honest admission at an AFL lunch on Sunday that he believed Muralitharan's bowling action was illegal, Smith's claims may surprise many, if not for their content then for some of the characters he names. He said Australian Test opener Matthew Hayden, not renowned for on-field antics, had greeted him at the crease before his second Test innings in Cape Town with a two-minute tirade. He claimed fast bowler Brett Lee had threatened to "f---ing kill me" after a mid-pitch collision, and described Glenn McGrath as "a grumpy old man" after a prolonged verbal campaign, even when the pace spearhead was fielding near the boundary. Smith said Hayden had followed him to the crease in his second innings and "stood on the crease for about two minutes telling me that I wasn't f---ing good enough". Smith told the magazine: "'You know, you're not f---ing good enough,' he told me. 'How the f--- are you going to handle Shane Warne when he's bowling in the rough? What the f--- are you going to do?'. "And I hadn't even taken guard yet. He stood there right in my face, repeating it over and over. All I could manage was a shocked, nervous smile. I'd taken a bit of banter before but this was something else. Hayden had obviously been told that his job was to attack me." Smith said he was then subjected to more of the same from a ring of close-in fieldsmen - Justin Langer, Ricky Ponting, Gilchrist, Mark Waugh and Shane Warne. While sledging, or "mental disintegration" as Steve Waugh calls it, is accepted as an unsettling tactic, Smith's claims suggest some Australians may not be as imaginative as they once were. "All Warne does is call you a c--- all day," said Smith, who tangled with the leg-spinner early on after one edged single. "When he walked past me he said: 'You f---ing c---, what are you doing here?' And I remember looking at [umpire] Rudi Koertzen and he just shrugged his shoulders as if to say, 'I know it's rough, kid, but that's the way it is'." Smith also clashed with Lee after they collided on the pitch, which led to a pack of Australians allegedly hounding the young Protea. "On the way back I apologised, but he said nothing. Then I hooked him for four and then a one and then it was drinks. As he walked past me he told me that he would f---ing kill me right there if I ever touched him again," Smith said. Of McGrath, Smith said: "He's like a grumpy old man. He doesn't stop cursing you. He called me a f---ing c--- and told me go away, that I didn't belong there. "He starts off quietly, but the minute you hit him for a boundary he loses the plot and it never stops." Smith eventually chirped back at McGrath during a one-dayer, asking if he was "constantly on his period". "It caused a massive fallout. After that he never stopped hurling abuse even when he was fielding at third man." Smith's verdict was that there was "never anything funny about the sledging. It was all just harsh". He didn't want to see sledging banned but "maybe certain things need to be monitored". ACB chief executive James Sutherland last night said that while the Board "does not condone sledging or verbal abuse", monitoring provisions contained in the International Cricket Council's player code of conduct were adequate to police the practice. "If Australian players are breaking the code of conduct, I'm sure the officials at the match would take appropriate action," he said. The ICC code, while acknowledging verbal exchanges between players will always take place, includes fines for players for "using language that is obscene, offensive or of a seriously insulting nature to another player, umpire, referee, team official or spectator."

The sanctimonious Aussie boys on this site may also consider this:

What's with the sanctimony, Mr Waugh

• Osman Samiuddin

Bless our stars, Steve Waugh has weighed in. From his pedestal, perched atop a great moral altitude, he spoke down to us.

"Like many, I'm deeply troubled by the events in Cape Town this last week, and acknowledge the thousands of messages I have received, mostly from heartbroken cricket followers worldwide.

"The Australian Cricket team has always believed it could win in any situation against any opposition, by playing combative, skillful and fair cricket, driven by our pride in the fabled Baggy Green.

"I have no doubt the current Australian team continues to believe in this mantra, however some have now failed our culture, making a serious error of judgement in the Cape Town Test match."

You'll have picked up by now that this was not going to be what it should have been: a mea culpa. "Sorry folks, Cape Town - my bad." One can hope for the tone, but one can't ever imagine such economy with the words.

Waugh's statement was a bid to recalibrate the Australian cricket's team moral compass, and you know, it would have been nice if he acknowledged his role in setting it awry in the first place. Because there can't be any doubt that a clean, straight line runs from the explosion-implosion of Cape Town back to that "culture" that Waugh created for his team, the one cricket gets so reverential about.

First, though, a little pre-reading prep, or YouTube wormholing, just to establish the moral frame within which we are operating. Start with this early in Waugh's international career - claiming a catch at point he clearly dropped off Kris Srikkanth. This was the 1985-86 season and he was young and the umpire spotted it and refused to give it out. So go here. This was ten years later, also at point, and he dropped Brian Lara, though he made as if he juggled and caught it. The umpire duped, Lara gone.

 

Steve Waugh: sanctimonious or statesman-like? Depends on which side of the "line" you stand on Getty Images

A man is not merely the sum of his incidents, and neither does he go through life unchanged. Waugh must have gone on to evolve, right? He became captain of Australia and soon it became clear that he had - all together now, in Morgan Freeman's voice - A Vision. There was a way he wanted his team to play the game.

He spelt it out in 2003, though all it was was a modification of the MCC's existing Spirit of Cricket doctrine. There were commitments to upholding player behaviour, and to how they treated the opposition and umpires, whose decisions they vowed to accept "as a mark of respect for our opponents, the umpires, ourselves and the game".

They would "value honesty and accept that every member of the team has a role to play in shaping and abiding by our shared standards and expectations".

Sledging or abuse would not be condoned. It wasn't enough that Australia played this way - Waugh expected others to do so as well. Here's Nasser Hussain, straight-talking in his memoir on the 2002-03 Ashes in Australia:

"I just think that about this time, he [Waugh] had lost touch with reality a bit he gave me the impression that he had forgotten what playing cricket was like for everyone other than Australia. He became a bit of a preacher. A bit righteous. It was like he expected everyone to do it the Aussie way because their way was the only way."

It was also duplicitous because the Aussie way Waugh was preaching was rarely practised on field by him or his team. So if Hussain refused to walk in the Boxing Day Test in 2002 after Jason Gillespie claimed a catch - with unanimous support from his team - well, you could hardly blame him, right, given Waugh was captain? YouTube wasn't around then, but not much got past Hussain on the field and the chances of those two "catches" having done so are low.

"Waugh created a case for Australian exceptionalism that has become every bit as distasteful, nauseating and divisive as that of American foreign policy"

As for the sledging that Waugh and his men agreed to not condone, revisit Graeme Smith's comments from the first time he played Australia, in 2001-02, with Waugh as captain. There's no need to republish it here but you can read about it (and keep kids away from the screen). It's not clever.

No, Waugh's sides didn't really show that much respect to opponents, unless their version of respect was Glenn McGrath asking Ramnaresh Sarwan - who was getting on top of Australia - what a specific part of Brian Lara's anatomy (no prizes for guessing which one) tasted like.

That incident, in Antigua, is especially instructive today because David Warner v Quinton de Kock is an exact replica. Sarwan's response, referencing McGrath's wife, was reprehensible, just as de Kock's was. But there was zilch recognition from either Warner or McGrath that they had initiated, or gotten involved in, something that could lead to such a comeback, or that their definition of "personal" was, frankly, too fluid and ill-defined for anyone's else's liking.

Waugh wasn't the ODI captain at the time of Darren Lehmann's racist outburst against Sri Lanka. Lehmann's captain, however, was Ricky Ponting, Waugh protege and torchbearer of values (and co-creator of the modified Spirit document), and so, historically, this was very much the Waugh era. As an aside, Lehmann's punishment was a five-ODI ban, imposed on him eventually by the ICC; no further sanctions from CA.

It's clear now that this modified code was the Australians drawing their "line", except the contents of the paper were - and continued to be - rendered irrelevant by their actions. The mere existence of it, in Australia's heads, has been enough.

You've got to marvel at the conceit of them taking a universal code and unilaterally modifying it primarily for themselves, not in discussion with, you know, the many other non-Australian stakeholders in cricket - who might view the spirit of the game differently, if at all they give any importance to it - and expecting them to adhere to it.

 

They won trophies, but not hearts Getty Images

It's why Warner and McGrath not only could not take it being dished back, but that they saw something intrinsically wrong in receiving it and not dishing it out. It's why it was fine to sledge Sourav Ganguly on rumours about his private life, but Ganguly turning up to the toss late was, in Waugh's words, "disrespectful" - to the game, of course, not him.

Waugh created a case for Australian exceptionalism, which has become every bit as distasteful, nauseating and divisive as the exceptionalism of all grand empires. Look at the varnish of formality in dousing the true implication of "mental disintegration"; does "illegal combatants" ring a bell?

What took hold after Waugh was not what he preached but what he practised. One of my favourite examples is this lesser-remembered moment involving Justin Langer, a Waugh acolyte through and through, and his surreptitious knocking-off of a bail in Sri Lanka. Whatever he was trying to do, it wasn't valuing honesty as Waugh's code wanted.

Naturally the mind is drawn to the bigger, more infamous occasions, such as the behaviour of Ponting and his side that prompted a brave and stirring calling out by Peter Roebuck. That was two years before Ponting's virtual bullying of Aleem Dar after a decision went against Australia in the Ashes. It sure was a funny way to accept the umpire's decision. Ponting loved pushing another virtuous ploy that could so easily have been a Waugh tenet: of entering into gentlemen's agreements with opposing captains and taking the fielder's word for a disputed catch. Not many opposition captains did, which was telling of the virtuousness sides ascribed to Australia.

That this happened a decade or so ago should, if nothing else, confirm that Cape Town isn't just about the culture within this side - this is a legacy, passed on from the High Priest of Righteousness, Steve Waugh, to Ponting to Michael Clarke to Steve Smith, leaders of a long list of Australian sides that may have been good, bad and great but have been consistently unloved.

It's fair to be sceptical of real change. The severity of CA's sanctions - in response to public outrage and not the misdemeanour itself - amount to another bit of righteous oneupmanship. We remove captains for ball-tampering, what do you do? We, the rest of the world, let the ICC deal with them as per the global code for such things, and in that time the sky didn't fall. Now, on the back of CA's actions, David Richardson wants tougher punishments, thus continuing the ICC's strategy of policy-making based solely on incidents from series involving the Big Three.

Waugh was a great batsman. He was the captain of a great side. The only fact to add to this is that he played the game with great sanctimony. That helps explains why Australia now are wh

12 minutes ago, dieter said:

The Ethans of the world might find this of interest:

Bucket tipped on Aussie sledgers By Trevor Marshallsea May 29 2002   The image of Australia's world champion cricket team has again been tarnished, this time by a uncommonly detailed account on sledging by South African rookie Graeme Smith. With Australian cricket officials already in damage control over Adam Gilchrist's labelling of Sri Lankan bowler Muttiah Muralitharan as a chucker, a new sledging controversy has emerged after Smith broke the traditional reluctance of elite players to bring on-field sledging incidents into the public domain. Smith, 20, emerged from his first two Tests and four one-dayers at home in February-March complaining of "below the belt" verbal assaults from his rivals but vowing: "I cannot repeat what the Aussies said." Now he has - in explicit detail - in the South African edition of Sports Illustrated, with an account unlikely to be well-received in the offices of the Australian Cricket Board at a time when its emphasis on image has never been higher. As the ACB mulls over what to do with renowned cleanskin Adam Gilchrist for his honest admission at an AFL lunch on Sunday that he believed Muralitharan's bowling action was illegal, Smith's claims may surprise many, if not for their content then for some of the characters he names. He said Australian Test opener Matthew Hayden, not renowned for on-field antics, had greeted him at the crease before his second Test innings in Cape Town with a two-minute tirade. He claimed fast bowler Brett Lee had threatened to "f---ing kill me" after a mid-pitch collision, and described Glenn McGrath as "a grumpy old man" after a prolonged verbal campaign, even when the pace spearhead was fielding near the boundary. Smith said Hayden had followed him to the crease in his second innings and "stood on the crease for about two minutes telling me that I wasn't f---ing good enough". Smith told the magazine: "'You know, you're not f---ing good enough,' he told me. 'How the f--- are you going to handle Shane Warne when he's bowling in the rough? What the f--- are you going to do?'. "And I hadn't even taken guard yet. He stood there right in my face, repeating it over and over. All I could manage was a shocked, nervous smile. I'd taken a bit of banter before but this was something else. Hayden had obviously been told that his job was to attack me." Smith said he was then subjected to more of the same from a ring of close-in fieldsmen - Justin Langer, Ricky Ponting, Gilchrist, Mark Waugh and Shane Warne. While sledging, or "mental disintegration" as Steve Waugh calls it, is accepted as an unsettling tactic, Smith's claims suggest some Australians may not be as imaginative as they once were. "All Warne does is call you a c--- all day," said Smith, who tangled with the leg-spinner early on after one edged single. "When he walked past me he said: 'You f---ing c---, what are you doing here?' And I remember looking at [umpire] Rudi Koertzen and he just shrugged his shoulders as if to say, 'I know it's rough, kid, but that's the way it is'." Smith also clashed with Lee after they collided on the pitch, which led to a pack of Australians allegedly hounding the young Protea. "On the way back I apologised, but he said nothing. Then I hooked him for four and then a one and then it was drinks. As he walked past me he told me that he would f---ing kill me right there if I ever touched him again," Smith said. Of McGrath, Smith said: "He's like a grumpy old man. He doesn't stop cursing you. He called me a f---ing c--- and told me go away, that I didn't belong there. "He starts off quietly, but the minute you hit him for a boundary he loses the plot and it never stops." Smith eventually chirped back at McGrath during a one-dayer, asking if he was "constantly on his period". "It caused a massive fallout. After that he never stopped hurling abuse even when he was fielding at third man." Smith's verdict was that there was "never anything funny about the sledging. It was all just harsh". He didn't want to see sledging banned but "maybe certain things need to be monitored". ACB chief executive James Sutherland last night said that while the Board "does not condone sledging or verbal abuse", monitoring provisions contained in the International Cricket Council's player code of conduct were adequate to police the practice. "If Australian players are breaking the code of conduct, I'm sure the officials at the match would take appropriate action," he said. The ICC code, while acknowledging verbal exchanges between players will always take place, includes fines for players for "using language that is obscene, offensive or of a seriously insulting nature to another player, umpire, referee, team official or spectator."

Meh. Stick and stones.

When you’ve left the safety of your inner city Melbourne pad and ventured into the real world dieter, these things seem rather trivial. I like to apply perspective. 

FWIW I don’t follow the cricket or hold sportspeople on a pedestal.

Edited March 30, 20187 yr by Ethan Tremblay

13 minutes ago, Ethan Tremblay said:

Meh. Stick and stones.

When you’ve left the safety of your inner city Melbourne pad and ventured into the real world dieter, these things seem rather trivial. I like to apply perspective. 

FWIW I don’t follow the cricket or hold sportspeople on a pedestal.

Are you talking about the wilds of Perth? or Fremantle? or Margaret River? That's not the real world, young man.

43 minutes ago, Ethan Tremblay said:

Who did our cricketers murder? I missed it. 

I heard some idiot on the radio yesterday say that the three involved and the coach will never be able to walk into a pub again.

The outrage is pathetic. I must have missed something. 

Which begs the question, young man, what level of outrage would you consider strong enough to stop an unfortunate from walking into a pub again?

And finally, the best commentary thus far:

A fence is already being erected around the 'Cape Town three'

By Malcolm Knox

That didn’t take long. The wheel of reaction, over-reaction and counter-reaction is already in full turn. Steve Smith’s emotional contrition at Sydney Airport has accelerated the cycle, as questions are asked about whether he was punished too harshly and how gently he can be tended. Just wait until a meek, ‘sportsmanlike’ Australia is getting towelled up by India on home soil. Listen for the pleas to recall the country’s two best batsmen. Ohmigodohmigodohmigod, Virat Kohli is bossing us around in Melbourne and Sydney! Where are Smith and Warner?

 

 

Fallen star: Steve Smith after his press conference at Sydney Airport.

Photo: Janie Barrett

And the attitude of the Australian players will be: what, you want it both ways? As the counter-reaction strengthens, the gulf of alienation between team and public will not be closed, but widened.

Cricket Australia is doing what it does best: standing outside the problem, travelling to the scene of the crime while placing itself as far from it as possible. It has its stooge (Cameron Bancroft), its helpless compromised hero (Smith), and its criminal mastermind (David Warner). It has the location: Cape Town, and only Cape Town. It has levied heavy punishments. It has ‘taken decisive action’.

What it only half-understands is the fundamental reason this created such disappointment and outrage in Australia, why these guys are out of cricket for a year for an act that put South Africa’s Faf du Plessis out of cricket for a week. It is not the world’s condemnation for the Australian cricket team. It is the eruption of pent-up distaste, even hatred, for the Australian team within this country.

Many Australians, it seems, have been waiting in a dark alley with cricket bats. Social media has given them voice. In times past, players thought their only critics were a maverick nuisance in press boxes, to whom they gave the finger or otherwise ignored. Nay-sayers did not represent the adoring masses. Now, haters of the Australian team haunt every club, every house, every keyboard. The team is deeply alienated from its own public. There is mutual grievance. When they lost meekly to South Africa two years ago, the Australian cricketers were lambasted. Then, their muscular, aggressive rebound was applauded. Winning was the purifier. They thought the public was giving them a licence to win by any means. And so here we are.

 

Does Cricket Australia really get it now? CA chairman David Peever said, ‘The CA board understands and shares the anger of fans and the broader Australian community about these events.’

‘These events’ are not the cause of the anger, they are its outlet. Peever identified the ‘integrity and reputation of Australian cricket’ being at stake. That’s right, but its integrity and reputation were not suddenly questioned because of what happened one afternoon in Cape Town.

The punishments – too heavy, not heavy enough – have an already disillusioned and sceptical public feeling it is taken for a fool. If the first inquiry’s findings are correct, we are being asked to accept the following. That for all the years David Warner has been ‘taking care’ of the ball, he has never doctored it illegally. That Warner has never in fact cheated in this way, because in Cape Town all he did was instruct Cameron Bancroft on how to do it. That Bancroft was not also up to mischief with the sugar in the pocket during the Ashes series, or at any other times when he wasn’t caught on film. That Steve Smith only ever participated in this cheating for the first time in Cape Town, where he was unlucky enough to be caught. That other questionable actions of Smith’s, such as the DRS incident in Bangalore last year, were not part of an ongoing culture of cheating. That the bowlers never knew that the ball handed to them by Warner at mid-off and suddenly began reverse-swinging was not just a marvel of their own skill. That Darren Lehmann, not so much a coach as a father to this team, never knew anything at any time.

So all that went wrong was one moment of madness in Cape Town? If that’s all it was, why are Smith and Warner banned for a year?

It’s a lot of credulity to ask of a public in its current mood. CA is drawing down on its reserves of goodwill, but the bank is empty. Punishing Smith and Warner, while a proper first step, will do nothing to make the public like their team again. Many will like their team even less. That is, those who haven’t already stopped calling it ‘their’ team. And it will not make the team like their public again either.

The second review, planned for later in the year but yet to be given specific terms and dates, proposes to go deeper. If CA understands the depth of its alienation from the public, James Sutherland will no longer be chief executive by then. There have been a lot worse administrators in sport, and certainly in cricket. Sutherland will point to a long list of achievements and successes. But at times of crisis, his most consistent success has been isolating himself from direct responsibility. It’s a century-old tradition in Australian cricket, where disgrace has always been an orphan. Sutherland can no more lead yet another investigation into the conduct of his staff, while claiming to stand above their misdeeds, than Ian Narev could absolve himself from the crookedness of the Commonwealth Bank.

Corporate responsibility also exists within the team. Australia should not be playing in the charade in Johannesburg. It devalues Test cricket. None of the team who played in Cape Town should still be there. Why would it be their fault if they had nothing personally to do with the cheating? Simply because they are a team. Some of them had nothing to do with it when they took no wickets or scored no runs during Test matches which Smith and Warner won for them. But they all got to celebrate because they were a team, all in it together regardless of who contributed what. Now, suddenly, they were not a team in Cape Town. They were eight innocents plus three cheats. Why do the remaining eight do not deserve the honour of a Test cap in Johannesburg? Because, to quote a famous line, the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. The Cape Town changing room is a small place, and the innocents, with their innocent coach, as always, had been trained to turn a blind eye. Oh – there is one get-out – that nobody in the team ever suspected Warner was up to anything with that ball for the past six years. As a slew of ex-players might put it, 'Laugh? I couldn’t stop crying'.

The Australian team under Smith has been no more roguish than previous outfits. Personally, I’ve enjoyed watching them much more than some of their graceless predecessors. Spare us the instant halo over the teams of the past. Nobody in those teams was convicted of premeditated cheating, but the opprobrium that Smith and Warner are wearing is an avalanche years in the making, constructed by years of moral casuistry from their predecessors (that ever-changing ‘line’). The fed-up Australian public haven’t just been reacting to Smith and Warner. They are reacting to the win-at-all-costs brand of cricket played by every Australian team they can remember, the hypocrisy of high-minded protestations of innocence and ‘Spirit of Cricket’ documents, and the ersatz cult of the ‘baggy green’. That disillusionment is deep, and that’s why Smith, Warner and Bancroft have been given suspensions that seem out of proportion to the Cape Town crime. They are wearing the can that has been kicked down to them by their forebears and their administrators. Spectators weren’t born yesterday, and nor was the Australian team’s ‘culture’.

What will happen? This moment could have been a trigger for regeneration. I suppose that was as naïve as thinking the death of Phillip Hughes would have been a trigger for a more humane spirit in the Australian game. The world changed in 2014, but then it changed back again. The Cape Town Three didn’t invent cheating. If a ring-fence is put around that episode, nothing will change in the culture of Australian cricket.

This bleak prospect can only be diverted by full accountability and openness, and an open-ended inquiry into the past. A public movement must be sustained, its message so consistent that administrators have no choice but to keep digging. Where will it lead? To the discovery of an underworld of sharp practice that invalidates Australia’s recent Ashes win and other achievements? It may not, but it may. Who is up to making a finding that Australia won its trophies unfairly? If those in power don’t have the courage to face that possibility, they should yield to those who do.

 

So dieter, somehow it's OK for you to disrespectfully label and call posters names AND show distain for a bunch of cricketers behaving poorly? Seems more than a touch of hypocrisy there.

I don't GAF about these players or their individual penalties, I just think it's been whipped up into a hysterical frenzy by the media and become more about revenge, perception and the bottom line (sponsorship, IPL, etc) and less about proportional response. Will this stop players ball tampering or behave poorly? Fat chance.

2 hours ago, dieter said:

Are you talking about the wilds of Perth? or Fremantle? or Margaret River? That's not the real world, young man.

Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, East Timor, Russia, Solomon Islands. I could keep going. Calling me ‘young man’ has no effect on me, it just makes you look a little immature.

Edited March 30, 20187 yr by Ethan Tremblay

28 minutes ago, Moonshadow said:

So dieter, somehow it's OK for you to disrespectfully label and call posters names AND show distain for a bunch of cricketers behaving poorly? Seems more than a touch of hypocrisy there.

I don't GAF about these players or their individual penalties, I just think it's been whipped up into a hysterical frenzy by the media and become more about revenge, perception and the bottom line (sponsorship, IPL, etc) and less about proportional response. Will this stop players ball tampering or behave poorly? Fat chance.

Dear Moonshadow

I have not called posters names.

Secondly, just for the record, I played this game at a relatively high level - Sub District in the late 60's as a 14 year old, and early 70's, both as a bowler and a batsman, I opened the batting and the bowling - and have great respect for this British game.

I come from that perspective, as a former player who has seen the values I played under totally destroyed by an Australian Culture which is both bogan and disrespectful. The media has nothing to do with this. All of the cricket world hates Australian cricketers not because they're better than them, but because they have, since the days of Lillee and Pascoe,   played like absolutely foul-mouthed aggressive bogans. Unless, of course, they were being beaten by cricketers who were better than them, who spoke with their bats or their fielding or their superior bowling. Just read some of the posts I've placed above for the edification of people like you who seem to believe 'My country right or wrong'.

People like you don't seem to get it...

In other words, the rest of the cricket world is crying out, 'Isn't it about freaking time you  reigned these morons in?'

 

3 hours ago, old dee said:

Australian fair play.

now that went out the window quite a few years ago, od, or weren't you paying attention? 

46 minutes ago, Ethan Tremblay said:

Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, East Timor, Russia, Solomon Islands. I could keep going. I literally broke my back serving this country, calling  me ‘young man’ doesn’t phase me. 

Ethan, yes, I've condescendly called you 'Young man'. Whether you've been involved in the illegal invasions of countries like Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan isn't the issue here - though it should make you look in the mirror about why you simply obeyed orders -  and is totally irrelevant. We were making observations about the atrocities committed over a very long time by a head butting Australian cricket team, nominally led by Smith - its proxy leader Warner - which has been sprung big time - after a nigh twenty year record of massive  intimidatory - not to mention sheer sanctimonious -  behavior and you want to talk about your record as a so-called defender of our - just what? For example, what were you defending me from in Afghanistan and Iraq and Kuwait? It's a question I've always wanted to ask people like you who wear as a badge of honour the invasion of a country on totally specious grounds. 

Edited March 30, 20187 yr by dieter

3 hours ago, old dee said:

Australian fair play.

Didn't Essendon do that? I am sure there are plenty of previous examples, without even mentioning underarm bowling ...

Sounds like someone didn’t get their skinny turmeric chai latte in today. 

Edited March 30, 20187 yr by Ethan Tremblay

10 hours ago, Ethan Tremblay said:

Sounds like someone didn’t get their skinny turmeric chai latte in today. 

Sounds like a fate worse than death ET.