HOLLOW VICTORIES
Sports cheats pay a high price for stupidity and harming their codes
WHEN there’s a will to win, someone will find a way to cheat.
The events in South Africa this week have been a tough lesson to learn, but why haven’t we learned already?
History is littered with filthy sporting cheats, yet more do it.
New ways, sophisticated regimes or just plain stupidity will get caught out.
There is so much on the line in professional sport these days. Money is the main one. It seems reputation and integrity has been trumped.
Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft will be known as the Three Cheaters.
It’s a despicable thing to cheat in any sport, but how stupid were they to scuff up a ball in full view of ground cameras, three umpires and the opponents?
To me, I reckon it says they’ve been doing a similar thing for a few Tests now and have got away with it.
Pushing the limits is an integral part of sport.
Make your body and mind do what you didn’t think it could. That’s where a sense of achievement comes from.
In the larger context of cheating in sport, rubbing a cricket ball with some muck off a cricket pitch doesn’t seem so bad.
Systematic doping and stone-faced denials in the case of disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong seems far more cataclysmic for his sport than this does for cricket.
But ask these three questions and answer for both cases.
Is what they did within the rules?
Was an unfair advantage sought to be gained?
Has the revelation opened a larger discussion about integrity within the sport? Yes, yes and yes. It’s how we deal with the Three Cheaters now that will have a lasting impact on the sport they play.
We are the country that gives people a fair go. So, for Bancroft there’s leniency because of his relative inexperience at the top level.
For Smith, the captain trusted with leading by example, we’ll be satisfied with a 12month ban. But I reckon most people will want to see him back, just not as captain.
For Warner, I think we’ve all had a gutful of his filthy mouth, on-field antics, selfish off-field proclamations during the pay dispute last year and his general poor behaviour on tour. Remember him whacking Joe Root in an English pub? The bloke has form.
Reputations are hard to rebuild after scandals like this. Just ask Jobe Watson. Essendon went outside the laws of the game to inject players with substances we still don’t exactly know.
It was all to get an edge on the field, but it took them to the edge off it.
Swimming, athletics, boxing, tennis and baseball have all had cheating controversies.
All sportsmen and women should learn from this lesson, but they should have learned from the one Lance Armstrong gave us, or the one Marion Jones did, or the Chinese swimmers.
But stupidly, people want to cheat to win.
It must be a hollow victory if they do, but it’s a great win for us when they get caught. still