OUR TURN AT CHEATS’ WHEEL OF MISFORTUNE

The truth is there are 101 ways to cheat at cricket, and pretty much everyone has done it

LIKE the ancient mariner, Trevor Chappell finally emerged from a decades-long exile of public opprobrium to pass on his curse.

With a glittering eye the villain of the underarm bowling incident of ’81 gleefully announced he was no longer the most hated man in Australian sport. He cast it off, more happy to be rid of the albatross around his neck than sorry for what awaited the disgraced Australian cricket captain Steve Smith.

Smith, the player feted as our greatest batsman since Don Bradman, this week held two of the worst press conferences of his life.

He’s not good at giving them anyway, but even by his lacklustre standards they departed the station and derailed immediately.

Naively thinking a manly admission of guilt could get him ahead of the controversy, he set off. But by week’s end Smith had reverted to a child, bawling his eyes out and pleading for public forgiveness.

The brightest star, and future of the country’s Test team, had lost sight of the gap between perception and reality.

For the truth is there are 101 ways to cheat at cricket, and pretty much everyone has done it.

The national team’s ball tampering is in the headlines, but the message to take whatever advantage you can in the game begins at an early age.

In under-16s cricket, playing in the local final, I remember the opposition coach screaming at his young charges when they failed to slow the game down enough, allowing another over that saw us tie with them. Before that they had run down the clock with their timewasting, strangling our opportunity to score.

You can call that tactics but it wasn’t fair.

Playing grade cricket, where you often have to double up as an umpire adjudicating against your own team, I learnt fast “don’t ever give an lbw”.

Having raised a finger to my captain when he was struck on the pads, plum in front, back on the sidelines, I got a dressing down in front of the rest of the team.

And when it was my turn to bat, the aggrieved captain came out to umpire and promptly gave me out even though the ball sailed past, making no connection. He’d asked one of the opposition players to appeal the first one I didn’t hit.

It was an important lesson. Cricket is about loyalty to your team not honour. It’s treated that way by everyone involved, from preparing the pitch in favour of the home side to the deliberate scuffing of the ball; the sledging; or the failure to walk when you’re out. It’s just not cricket!

Well, it is actually. That’s very much what cricket is.

And it is against that background our national team has come unstuck.

There is a gaping chasm between public perceptions of the game and an often brutal reality. The same reality that saw cricket arrogantly close its ranks at the inquest into Phillip Hughes’ death. Nothing to see here. Everything that has happened in this past week has clung to that ethos. The decision to rough up the ball with sandpaper (why choose bright yellow?), the manchild captain invoking a “leadership group” to explain his decision.

It would be churlish to cite the numerous examples of cheating in international cricket, the match fixing, the drugs, the sledging.

The cheats’ wheel of misfortune has landed on most countries, and now it’s our turn.

A sadder and a wiser man, Steve Smith has learnt it the hard way.