Do the right thing, Qantas warns
London: Cricket Australia has been told by major sponsor Qantas to deal with its cheating scandal as quickly as possible, with the airline’s chief executive Alan Joyce saying that the incident had damaged Australia’s global reputation as the land of the “fair go”.
Joyce said he was “extremely disappointed” by the incident, which has seen his airline’s logo - embroidered on disgraced former captain Steve Smith’s official team cap – printed on the front pages of newspapers across the globe.
LET DOWN
“We are extremely disappointed with what they’ve done,” Joyce said at an event at the Australian High Commission in London yesterday.
“Australia’s all about a fair go… and unfortunately our cricket team have let us down.”
Joyce said the incident, in which Smith has admitted to hatching a plot for bowler Cameron Bancroft to tamper with the ball on day three of the test series in South Africa, had damaged Australia’s reputation abroad.
“So we’ve said to Cricket Australia: you need to address this and need to address this fast - you need to do the right thing,” Mr Joyce said.
ACT QUICKLY
Joyce said it was reasonable that Cricket Australia needed to conduct its investigation into the incident, but nonetheless Qantas was “in dialogue” with the sports body and wanted the issue resolved “as fast as possible”.
“We want them to make a statement
about that this is not acceptable to the rest of the world, because the rest of the world figures that’s the case,” he said.
While he took a strong stance on the scandal, Mr Joyce said Qantas was “nowhere near” the point of withdrawing sponsorship, and had not threatened to do so.
SPONSORS STAND
Joyce said he was sure that Cricket Australia understood the significance of the incident.
“If you just look at the worldwide publicity, you know the significance of it,” he said.
Other Cricket Australia sponsors have also spoken out since the scandal broke, with Lion, the brewer of XXXX Gold beer, saying the ball-tampering scandal was “not what you’d expect from anyone in sport at any level”.
Sanitarium, the maker of Weet-Bix and a sponsor of Smith and the Big Bash League, said it was “a shameful moment for Australian sport” and would assess its sponsorship of Smith once Cricket Australia’s investigation was complete.