Hypocrisy festers at heart of Aussie sport
Atherton was lucky no social media
OPINION: One by one the cricketers cried, in some ghoulish theatre of the damned. As if it were not enough that Steve Smith had seen his career reduced to matchwood, he was asked by a preening radio jock how his own cheating scandal compared to that of Davina and Dean on Married at First Sight, a trashy local reality show. By the time it was David Warner’s turn, the emoting was so lachrymose that TV cameras panned live to his distraught wife Candice, being comforted by her publicist (who else?).
Perhaps, one wondered, this was the going rate for a penance in Australia, the price men had to pay for gross acts of sporting treachery.
There are convicted felons, drug mules busted at airport security in Bangkok, who have endured less savage reprisals than Smith. From being heckled in Johannesburg, to breaking down in a press conference in Sydney, he has run the full gamut of public mortification. Smith accepts, too, that it is his cross to bear, announcing this week that he would not contest his sanctions by Cricket Australia, which has banned him from all international and state cricket for 12 months. ‘‘They have been imposed,’’ he said, ‘‘to send a strong message.’’
Right. How Australia loves a powerful message. Even Malcolm Turnbull, the prime minister, agreed that a betrayal of the Baggy Green mandated exemplary punishment. Scuffing up a cricket ball: it was as if, in Australian eyes, no fouler deed could be committed on foreign soil. What about threatening to kill a woman, though? If, as might be tempting after Sandpaper-gate, you regard the unlovely Warner as the country’s least redeemable villain, then I invite you to consider the case of Matthew Lodge. In the small hours of October 16, 2015, Lodge, now a rugby league poster boy for the Brisbane Broncos, began harassing Carolin Dekeyser, a young German woman, on the streets of Manhattan. He then followed her, repeatedly saying: ‘‘Tonight’s the night you’re going to die.’’ When she eventually rang the doorbell of a random apartment, petrified, Lodge barged in after her, repeatedly hitting the owner, Joseph Cartwright, in the face.
By the time police arrived, Lodge had smashed up much of the furniture and was trying to punch his way through a bathroom door to reach Cartwright’s wife and nine-year-old son, both cowering in terror.
Lodge was sacked by his then employers, Wests Tigers, but this was about as far as his punishment extended. Unlike cricket’s Cape Town Three, this thug has offered no aching remorse, paid no compensation to his victims and received no suspension from playing. Likewise, senior figures within his sport have been swift to circle the wagons. ‘‘We let blokes back into the game who touched women and hit women,’’ shrugged Paul Gallen, captain of the Cronulla Sharks. ‘‘Let’s just move on.’’
Move on to what, exactly? The tacit toleration of domestic violence? It is not as if this was, as Lodge has sought to argue, a drunken one-off. He subsequently pleaded guilty to an assault in 2016 on Christine Saliba, his former partner, who alleged that he pushed and shoved her, spat in her face, and made threats on her life. And the view of Broncos coach Wayne Bennett, who guided England’s most recent World Cup campaign, about all this? ‘‘You guys in the media preach rehabilitation,’’ he said. ‘‘This guy has rehabilitated himself.’’
Except he has done nothing of the sort. Lodge has not paid a dime to the American family traumatised by his rampage, while National Rugby League has refused to clarify whether it knew of his later violence towards Miss Saliba before deeming him fit to represent the Broncos.
Debate in Australia remains consumed by calls for a review of cricket culture, for a restoration of the game’s traditional niceties in place of bovine sledging. Largely, though, this is a simple question of tone and tenor. The poison within Australian rugby league, however, is much more corrosive.
For all the quibbles in cricket about where to draw the line, there are no such ambiguities about the line between those who countenance hitting a woman and those who do not. The dark truth is too many league stars here fall on the wrong side.
Kirisome Auva’a, of Parramatta Eels, describes Lodge as a ‘‘mate, a nice genuine bloke’’. He neglected to add that the two also a share a propensity for beating up women. In 2014, Auva’a threw his then girlfriend against a garage door. Zane Tetevano, of Sydney Roosters, has admitted kicking and slapping an expartner, serving a nine-month jail term. On one occasion, he picked the woman up by her shirt, held her against a wall and hurled her across the bedroom. Addin FonuaBlake, of Manly Sea Eagles, has acknowledged punching the mother of his two children. It is a veritable confederacy of cowards.
So, amid the orgy of sanctimony over Sandpaper-gate, consider whether Australia truly has its priorities right.
Conspire to rough up a cricket ball, like Smith, and you can expect a flogging without end. Rough up a woman, like Lodge, and you are still free to be paraded as a role model in front of 45,000 at Suncorp Stadium.
Even after a fortnight’s soulsearching, the country has still not begun to address this ugliest of double standards. Kevin Pietersen believes former England captain Mike Atherton’s career would have been ended by a ball-tampering scandal, had social media existed in the 1990s.
Atherton was fined £2000 (NZ$3857) after being accused of using dirt in his pocket to alter the condition of the ball during the Lord’s test against South Africa in 1994.
Former England batsman Pietersen, who retired from all cricket in March, said Atherton was fortunate social media wasn’t around for his incident. Atherton went on to play internationally until 2001.
Ball tampering has dominated the headlines over the past fortnight after disgraced Australian trio, Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft were involved in a plot to alter the condition of the ball illegally using sandpaper during the third test against South Africa at Cape Town.
Vice-captain Warner, who has been identified as the instigator of the ball tampering saga, was banned for playing for his country for 12 months – the same punishment as former captain Smith. Bancroft has been banned for nine months.
Writing in The Spectator, Pietersen said: ‘‘If social media had been around for Mike Atherton’s ball-tampering scandal in 1994, he would have been ruined.
‘‘The anger and the animosity from the Australian public, and the global community, wouldn’t have been as severe without Twitter and Facebook.’’