The disease infecting the Australian cricket team has found a host in Sandpaper Gate
THERE is something rotten at the heart of the Australian cricket team. There’s no hiding from that now after Steve Smith and co. smashed the already brittle culture in to a thousand pieces.
Cricket
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DODGY DUO: Smith, Warner stand down from leadership
IAN CHAPPELL: Don’t punish Smith, punish them all
SHOCK ADMISSION: Smith admits to cheating
NUTS AND BOLTS: How Aussies hatched a plan to cheat
EXPERTS REACT: Tell me this is a bad dream
CRICKET AUSTRALIA: We must follow process first
READERS VERDICT: Public call for Smith’s head
MADNESS entered that room in the Western Cape Cricket Club stand at lunch time on day three of the third Test. It had been glimpsed before but now it held a seat at the head of the table.
The dressing room, like the baggy green, is sacred, ground where only the privileged trod. A closed community where a handful who had the talent and the will to succeed gathered.
At the same time the conspiracy to cheat was taking place chairman of Cricket Australia David Peever was grabbing a quick lunch with VIPs in the Cricket South Africa President’s Box. He was due to fly home later that day. He and chief executive James Sutherland had just made it clear they were unhappy with the way the crowd was behaving.
They were made to look silly by the events that unfolded.
When Peever got off the plane in Sydney he was greeted by a phone call from the Prime Minister. His celebrated side and its administration were at the centre of what might be the greatest controversy in the history of Australian cricket. They are certainly at the heart of the greatest disappointment.
There is something rotten at the heart of the Australian cricket team. There’s no hiding from that now.
Something has gone wrong in that shifting dressing room and it was going wrong before lunch time on Saturday.
LISTEN! A special ball tampering crisis Cricket Unfiltered episode is out with News Corp’s Russell Gould and Andrew Menczel dissecting the fallout of the Australian cheating scandal.
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The public has struggled to love a side that wins ugly, but success and nationalism and tradition have patched the frayed fabric.
A conspiracy to cheat is, however, and has ripped the cloth and major repairs will be needed. The mend will not be invisible.
How do the senior players in the side find themselves in a dressing room and come to a considered decision to take this action? Desperation is one thing. The predisposition to acting on it far more disturbing.
Where were the adults in the room? The answer to the question is, sadly, that these are the adults. Or the nearest thing to them that the game can summon.
A sudden act of madness, like all profound disruptions and disasters, was a long time coming.
What happened in the dressing room is a matter of intense conjecture. Steve Smith wants to own it, but threw the leadership group under the bus when he nominated those men. He wouldn’t name them but the leadership group is he, David Warner, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood.
Smith is understood to have made a mistake in the heat of the moment. “Senior players” would have been a better term.
Starc and Hazlewood had nothing to do with this and have been slandered.
Where we go from here will be less informative than how we got here.
Ball tampering has been a hot issue on the field this entire series. The Australians claimed AB de Villiers was up to it with his wicketkeeping gloves in the 2014 tour of South Africa. That public suggestion cost David Warner a fine. The hysteria around Faf du Plessis and the mint during the 2016-17 series was also on minds.
Warner and de Villiers squared off in Port Elizabeth, the Australian heard to ask his opponent are you accusing me of ball tampering? The South Africans were suspicious of Warner’s bandaging during that second game and the broadcaster which caught the Australians in their moment of shame were onto it too.
It was curious that Warner, who is in charge of ball maintenance, had given up the task and moved into the slips. He said they were dropping too many catches. His job went to Cameron Bancroft.
The South African players swear they saw the Australians up to no good at Port Elizabeth.
No good has been coming a long time.
Cameron Bancroft is collateral damage. A not so innocent bystander playing just his eighth Test.
Bancroft was seen sliding what looked like sugar into his pocket during a break in play at the Ashes. There was some dismissive excuse for that at the time, nobody really cared that much. Cricketers have been using mints and sugar to polish the ball for a long time. When Faf du Plessis got caught going it in Hobart last summer his excuse was that everybody did it and Steve Smith appeared to support him.
Cricketers summon reverse swing by ensuring one side of the ball is clean and shining while the other is scuffed and bone dry. The scuffing happens naturally, it happens when a bowler like Mitchell Starc lands the ball constantly on one side, it can be generated by throwing the ball in side arm from the boundary and bouncing it on the square. Umpires complain about this but its an accepted practice to a point.
All teams have an appointed ball manager who has dry palms. He identifies which side will be shone and which neglected early in the game. Reverse swing is key on flat wickets. Other team members are instructed to handle the ball carefully and to never in any circumstances get the dry side wet or throw in so the shiny side gets damaged.
Lyon has clammy palms and has been instructed to hold the ball a certain way because he has often been blamed for ruining the chances of reverse swing.
Some of that is straining the rules, all of it is acceptable to the participants in modern cricket. Umpires called a captain in one morning of a Shield match and said the ball smelt more like a bag of lollies than leather and they were replacing it. The situation wasn’t made public. A blind eye was and is often turned.
Damaging the ball with a foreign object is completely unacceptable. It happens at all levels, but usually it is a discrete thumb nail.
The Australians play ugly on the field because they think it is how they play their best. They are aware it turns people off but they are prepared to pay that price. They are more devoted to winning than to doing what anybody tells them is the right thing.
It hasn’t sat well with everybody in the group. Some of the younger players were upset by the ugly scenes and baiting early in this tour. It has not sat right with the international cricket fans, overseas teams and some Australian fans for a long time.
Things got out of hand in Cape Town with the side under siege from the crowd, the opposition and the rod they had made for their own back.
As Gideon Haigh wrote, the Australians set fire to the kitchen and then found they couldn’t stand the heat.
Common sense got lost. With it all integrity. The shark was jumped. A black swan introduced.
Winning at all costs has become a lot more costly than the participants ever thought it would.