Barnaby Joyce slams Malcolm Turnbull for ball-tampering ‘pile on’

Barnaby Joyce has lashed Malcolm Turnbull for denouncing ball-tampering players, as the ex-PM attempted to win votes.

Barnaby Joyce. Picture: AAP

Barnaby Joyce has criticised Malcolm Turnbull and his former cabinet colleagues for denouncing members of the Australian cricket team caught in March’s ball-tampering scandal.

A cultural review of Cricket Australia released earlier this week found that administrators did not take enough responsibility for the South Africa ball-tampering scandal, which saw test captain Steve Smith and players David Warner and Cameron Bancroft receive long bans from playing.

Mr Joyce said today that the former prime minister and other ministers were part of a “pile on” of the banned test cricketers because they thought it would win them votes.

“They had to bring these people out one at a time until they were crying. They broke these three individuals. There was this pile on, this virtue signalling,” the former Nationals leader told 2GB today.

“And it came from Turnbull and it came from other people, and to be quite frank, in cabinet they got themselves on television saying how evil this all was … I’ve seen these baying dogs and they all think they’ll get a vote by sticking the slipper into someone.

“Those guys, Warner, Bancroft and Smith, they made a mistake. They needed a kick up the arse, but they got more than that.”

Mr Joyce said he was not aware if Mr Turnbull had called Cricket Australia over the fates of Smith, Warner and Bancroft after they were implicated in ball tampering during a game with South Africa earlier this year.

Cricketing greats including Shane Warne and Adam Gilchrist have called for the three players’ bans to be shortened.