Throw the book at cheating Aussies

The look on the face of former Australian cricket captain Allan Border as he spoke on Supersport on Saturday evening said it all. There was shock, there was embarrassment and there was disgust. Border could not believe that a team of which he was once a proud leader could have stooped so low as Steve Smith’s did by illegally tampering with the match ball to make it reverse swing.

Cameron Bancroft was caught by Supersport’s cameras using what turned out to be yellow adhesive tape to pick up dirt from the pitch and then using that to scour one side of the ball. Bancroft compounded the crime by secreting the evidence in his trousers and making out to umpires that he had something else in his pocket.

Smith has admitted that he and the seniors in the side – including Dave Warner, Nathan Lyon and Mitchell Starc – were involved. But, he claims that team management was unaware of what was happening. And to that we say: How the hell can we believe you? This is an Australian team which has already set new standards in terms of whining and complaining – about “sledging” (which they seem to have forgotten they effectively invented) and about South African crowds “attacking” their players.

This latter complaint was laid by coach Darren Lehmann, who said the crowd behaviour was the worst he had seen in his career. (Perhaps Lehmann forgot about the chicken spectators threw at Pat Symcox during a test in Australia, or the racial abuse suffered in Australia by Imran Tahir ... or about his own comment that Sri Lankan cricketers were “black c***s”.)

This Australian side has shown that winning is everything and that the end justifies the means. We hope the international cricketing authorities deal with this blatant cheating in the harshest way possible.