Cheating, bleating Australia
OPINION: The great white whale of a body lies battered and bleeding out on the canvas. I’m talking about a whole civilisation here, I’m talking about Australian cricket, not some ageing punch drunk boxer who thought he could cheat a world title.
Although maybe it is hard to tell the difference between the two, between which is the bigger cheat. Lucas Browne, a flaky bit of stale patisserie, a flabby 38-year-old pastry spilling over the top of his shorts, led out of a London boxing arena on a stretcher. Or Australian cricket, fiddling in its pocket, hand down the front of its trousers, encrusted in dirt that it will never wash clean.
‘‘Cheating Australia, bleating Australia, you’ll come a cheating Australia with me.’’
It was a calamitous weekend for Australian sport, humiliated in London and disgraced in Cape Town. But at least Browne got what was coming to him.
The Aussie called Dillian Whyte an orangutan, a racial slur that would have him prosecuted in some countries. Browne’s payment was to be brutally clubbed until his face was a bloody marshland.
But how will Australian cricket be punished, because their disgrace was not the isolated act of one man. This was pre-planned cheating. The leadership group decided they would ask a junior member of the team to take a piece of tape out onto the field, sprinkle it with dirt granules and use it to rough up the ball.
What I simply do not begin to understand is how the test match, at a decisive point in the series between South Africa and Australia, had been allowed to go on. The Aussies were caught cheating. They admitted the cheating was pre-planned by the leadership group. And yet they were still given the chance to win the game.
Just how morally bankrupt is modern professional cricket. When a golfer cheats, they may never recover from the stigma. A young Scot, who had a habit of replacing his ball on the green nearer the hole, became known as the ballmark kid. He was thrown out of golf for twenty years. Vijay Singh still lives with the stigma of singing for an incorrect score.
Even in the murky world of cycling, people are now being stripped of their titles and receiving long bans from the sport. Tour de France champion Chris Froome is currently on the edge of just such sanctions. Even the IOC have acted, and we know how corrupt that lot are.
But cricket seems to endorse cheating. ‘It just isn’t cricket’ is a phrase utterly void of modern meaning. It has no context. When exposed as a cheat, Australian captain Steve Smith’s initial reaction was to say that he would not be resigning and would move on. Doubtless there were quite a few ‘learnings’ to be had.
At least Cricket Australia had a bit more sense than that and forced Smith and vice-captain David Warner to step down. Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull called the incident, ‘‘completely beyond belief’’ and ‘‘a shocking disappointment’’.
We expect our prime ministers to lie to save face. But if this really came as a shock or beyond belief to Turnbull then he is as thick as two short planks, of which there are plenty in his current cabinet. Australian cricket, indeed much of the entire cricket world, has been routinely cheating for years. It’s just that the Aussies seem to think they are entitled.
The real clue to this whole sordid business came when James Sutherland, the chief executive of Cricket Australia, said, ‘‘This Test needs to proceed, and in the interim we will continue to investigate this matter. Cricket Australia and Australian cricket fans expect certain standards of conduct from cricketers representing our country, and on this occasion these standards have not been met.’’
The first question to ask about quite such a bewildering statement is why did this test need to proceed? Why did Australia not immediately forfeit the match? Why did they not immediately forfeit the series?
And of course we know the grubby answer to that one. Money. Tickets have been sold. The broadcast rights have been bought up for vast quantities of cash. The game must go on, because it’s not really a game at all. It’s a product. As far as the ICC is concerned, the bottom line is the bottom line.
Regardless of what Sutherland pretends, in a year’s time most Australians won’t give a four x. Have you seen the rabid, snarling screaming faces at the Aussie Rules or the league. The feral need to win is all that matters.
At the start of this series against South Africa, the Aussies wanted the stump mikes turned down so that the world could not hear their revolting sledging. Then Warner whines because a South African had a go at his wife. The Aussies talked about overstepping boundaries. They couldn’t see the boundary rope if they fell over it. The hypocrisy is sickening.
A few weeks before this latest day of shame, I was sent the thoughts of Bruce Francis, a former Australian international, and a man who has so many different ways to express his love for the game.
Then he wrote, ‘‘Today, I am embarrassed to say I played cricket. Now when I look for synonyms for cricketer it says thug, loud mouth, bogan, ocker, yobbo, spoilt brat and the one that crushes my spirit more than any other - ugly Australian.
‘‘As angry as that change makes me, it doesn’t compare with the anger I have for the cricket officials – administrators, umpires, match referees and players’ associations who have allowed the players to destroy the game and its image.
‘‘James Sutherland, the appropriately named Peever and the rest of the Cricket Australia board, Pat Howard and Darren Lehmann should hang their heads in shame as they resign.
‘‘The grubs at the AFL notwithstanding, it’s hard to imagine an organisation that has done more damage to the good name of a sport than Cricket Australia.’’
Good on ya, Bruce.
No more need be said.