Emily cops big bash for other cricketers’ sins
Cricketer Emily Smith has been banned for a joke gone wrong and the punishment comes nowhere near to fitting the crime, writes Katie Bice.
Opinion
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Cricketer Emily Smith has been hard done by, a victim perhaps of those who have gone before her. In the past week she’s been banned from the game for a year over a joke. Nine months of the punishment has been suspended but it will still keep her out of the bulk of the season.
Her crime was to upload a video to her Instagram account of the team batting line-up. It was a bit of self-deprecating humour pointing out her lowly position. Apart from her family and friends, it’s unlikely many people saw it — certainly no one who would use the information for nefarious reasons.
But Cricket Australia deemed it a serious threat to the game’s integrity and came down hard. They said that millions is wagered on WBBL games and that the rules are clear and known well to Smith.
There’s no doubt her actions were thoughtless but there was no malice, no benefit to her and realistically no threat to the game.
While they are right to be concerned about the integrity of the competition, what about fairness? Just because Cricket Australia is clearly worried about the looming spectre of corruption doesn’t mean it should unleash on a 24-year-old for being a twit, devastating her and potentially cruelling her career.
If you need some cases for comparison you don’t have to look far. Collingwood’s Jaidyn Stephenson placed bets on games his team was involved in. He did it three times. His punishment was 10 weeks out of the game and he was back in time for finals.
Three Olyroos players were suspended — one until April, the others till August — after some legal but morally dubious behaviour with a woman on tour.
They are banned from national duties but can continue to play A-League.
There is also the greatest scandal in Australian cricket history in which two players were suspended for a year and one for nine months for applying their handyman skills to some sandpaper and a cricket ball.
The point is that cases must be judged on their merits. While some are a serious breach of integrity, others are nothing more than a silly person doing a stupid thing.
A joke or a prank must be dealt with differently from a deliberate and sustained course of conduct.
And all cases, whether they are committed by national captains, potential premiership-winning heroes or fringe players, must be dealt with the same.
To mete out true justice the punishment must fit the crime.
Katie Bice is the Sunday Herald Sun deputy editor.
@ktbice