Opinion: Life Education Queensland’s Michael Fawsitt on Cricket Australia crisis.

SOMETHING has gone seriously wrong within the Australian cricket team writes Michael Fawsitt who says the actions by the Australian cricket team in Cape Town are symptomatic of a bigger problem.

THE actions by the Australian cricket team in Cape Town are symptomatic of a bigger problem than the ball tampering incident itself. There is a culture that needs to change.

At Life Education we teach young people about the dangers of peer and social pressures, and how these can lead to poor choices and serious consequences. Here we have a perfect example of those pressures at work within our own cricket team.

It is astonishing that senior players would even openly contemplate ball tampering in a dressing room conversation. That they would then go ahead and plan it and then carry it out in front of a global audience beggars belief. Something has gone seriously wrong within the Australian cricket team.

This is not a case of an individual choosing to cheat in isolation. It was a collective decision that was orchestrated, it appears, by senior members of the team.

What really happened to take them to a point where the risk of losing a game of cricket became so great that ball tampering was the solution? That they would risk their reputation in order to gain a slight advantage?

The fact that no one in the team stood up and prevented this incident from ever happening, is perhaps the most worrying.

Even from thousands of miles away, as cricket followers we could sense the pressure cooker situation building between the two teams in recent weeks. It must have been immense, but that’s no excuse. Sadly, the series is likely to be far more remembered for the ill feeling and poor behaviour of players from both sides than it is for the high quality cricket played out on the park.

As a cricket fan I’m dismayed, but I’m more disappointed for the thousands of kids who play and watch the game and look up to their sporting heroes as role models.

I’m also dismayed for the cricketers involved too. They will carry this with them for many years to come and it will unfortunately tarnish, to some extent, their achievements on the cricket field.

I have no doubt they will learn a lot from this. We all should. With the Commonwealth Games on our doorstep, let’s take the opportunity to show all that’s good about sport. Let’s compete, let’s aim to win, let’s play fair, and if we lose, accept it graciously and with respect for our opponents. After all, whichever sport we play, and however much we want to win, it’s really only a game.

Michael Fawsitt is the CEO of Life Education Queensland