How did it all get to this?
AUSSIE CRICKET
CRICKET Australia is facing a national revolt unless it sacks Steve Smith as Test captain, and the besieged leader faces another uprising from angry senior players.
The punters have spoken and they are as furious over the ball tampering incident as any event in recent cricket history.
A News Corp poll of almost 30,000 fans has voted 90 per cent in favour of sacking Smith and while the fans’ opinion is never the deciding factor, Cricket Australia would do well not to underestimate the outrage.
According to the man in the street, the Australian cricket team is on the nose. It officially stinks.
But the ball tampering affair was not a moment of madness.
It was the culmination of a grubby win-at-all-costs culture deliberately crossing the thin line between self-righteous rule bending into a world of shameless, bald face cheating.
Having teased and taunted and demeaned opposition sides for years, Australia developed such a shallow respect for the spirit of the game that it decided a little bit of cheating would not go astray.
But this story has many threads, including: CAMERON BANCROFT THE COACHES HOW on earth did the coaches let it get to this? If Darren Lehmann and his staff were part of this decision, they should resign. If they were not part of the decision then you wonder what on earth do they actually do? No matter how innocent they profess to be, the coaches must take some responsibility for letting a group of players make perhaps the dumbest collective decision in the history of Australian cricket. DON’T THROW STONES BACK in the 1980s Australian players used to be outraged at how Pakistani bowlers used to get the ball to reverse swing. Well, this episode is even worse because back then the world was still awakening to the reverse swing culture. Now the rules are clearer than they were and everyone knows the difference between right and wrong, black and white. HISTORY WHERE does this rate as an historical howler? For me, it is the most embarrassing episode since Australia fined Mark Waugh and Shane Warne for dealing with Indian bookies in the late 1990s and then kept it secret for several years. But in many ways this one is worse. Back then there were no rules in place regarding bookmakers and Warne and Waugh initially had no idea what they were getting into. This is just cold, premeditated cheating. THE MOOD OF THE NATION I WENT to a community breakfast yesterday where a speaker stood up and said: “Firstly, before I say anything, I would just like to apologise for the behaviour of our national cricket team.’’ People laughed. Some shook their heads. That is what it has come to. Our pride and joy have become an embarrassment.