Aussie cheating crisis
If Smith goes for good, his replacements also have their hands in the sewer
SDavid Leggat
teps are moving in a logical direction within the Australian cricket team. Steve Smith stood down as captain for the rest of the Cape Town test late last night; David Warner has done the same from the vice-captaincy.
It is the first step towards either Smith resigning for good, or he is ditched by Cricket Australia.
In that case, the question becomes: Who replaces Smith? It will be wicketkeeper Tim Paine for the rest of this test, but then what?
The leadership group, who all joined in the plot to tamper with the ball at Cape Town on Saturday, in a bizarre bid to help their side fight their way back into the third test against South Africa, would be the next obvious candidates.
But they can hardly be appointed after having their hands in the sewer together with their skipper.
So if you take out that mob — still not identified by name, by the way, as of late last night — as contenders, who next?
There’s slim pickings in the current squad. But that’s jumping ahead of the game, which set off at a cracking pace yesterday and has the potential to run hard all this week, and possibly into the distance as well.
Across the Tasman, this is being called Australia’s biggest cricket crisis since the World Series Cricket revolution set up by business mogul Kerry Packer in 1977.
The underarm ball at Melbourne in 1980-81? Forget it. That was unpalatable but within the laws.
The ramifications of the last 24 hours could be long and painful for Australian cricket.
Australia’s approach to the game is not to all tastes. But playing hard and aggressively, of which they are relentlessly, chest-puffingly proud — but not crossing that flimsy line players frequently talk about without ever fully explaining what they mean — is one thing.
This was straight out, and admitted, cheating. Even the Australian Prime Minister, doing what politicians are wont to do, grabbed a headline out of it yesterday.
Former captain Michael Clarke did likewise, solemnly advising the world he would be available to take back the captaincy if asked, which is big of him. The outcry has been swift and furious. Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland, sounding shaken yesterday, was “extremely disappointed and shocked”. He could scarcely be anything else. And this from senior cricket writer at the Brisbane Courier Mail, Robert Craddock, who has covered the Australian team for 30 years: “Don’t think for a minute this was an isolated moment of madness . . . it was a team with grubby standards finally descending into a world which was never far away. The coaches knew nothing? Really? What are they coaching for?” What on earth was Smith thinking? There are cameras everywhere these days. Bancroft, who has played eight tests, evidently volunteered to use the sticky tape to try and rough up the ball, and because he’s a low profile figure within the team, the cameras were less likely to be on him than, say, Warner. How naı¨ve can you get. Bancroft — who jumped ahead of Diaz in the list of most searched Camerons on Google yesterday — insisted he was not pressured into playing his part with the sticky tape and the ball. Currying favour with his seniors perhaps? Smith’s attitude at the end-of-day press conference was instructive. No, he wouldn’t be resigning, didn’t see why he should and still felt he was the best man for the job. He clearly didn’t get it, had no comprehension of the ramifications of what he had overseen. And in that, Smith simply showed he is precisely the wrong type of person to be in charge. After yesterday’s revelations, there is no argument he can possibly mount in his defence. Coach Darren Lehmann, who once called England bowler Stuart Broad a blatant cheat for not walking, and suggested all good Australians should rise up and give him serious gyp, shouldn’t survive either, even though Smith has excluded management from any part in the conspiracy. If Lehmann really didn’t know anything about the plot, he shouldn’t be in the job anyway because, in an odd way, it will be proof he’s lost the dressing room. There will be cricket nations quietly relishing Australia getting their comeuppance. They aren’t all perfect by any stretch but there’s a whiff of hypocrisy in the air. Australia historically aren’t slow in pointing the finger. Perhaps it boils down to this, in Smith’s words: his players, involved in an ugly, fractious series, were desperately trying to get themselves back in the game because “we saw this game as such an important game”. The series is 1-1 and Australia were going down the tubes in game three. Sounds like a good reason to toss the game in the toilet.
Shock at plot B10-11