Arrogant Australia felt untouchable
Smith has drawn comparisons with Bradman but ends winter in disgrace
LIKE any sportsman guilty of cheating, there was a narrow question which Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft asked themselves before electing to make their choice.
It is the same question any cyclist or athlete who chooses to dope asks, and at its centre is the risk-reward of sporting advantage against damage to reputation.
Like many before them they made that call and they lost, and as a result they will carry around the legacy of being a cheat for the rest of their playing days, quite possibly beyond.
They may feel they can deal with that. Take it on the chin. But as ever, there is a bigger picture which they failed to see. It is the wider question they should have asked at the same time: Are they entitled to gamble with the reputation of their sport?
The answer to that is an emphatic no.
What has played out in Cape Town as the latest twist to an increasingly spiteful series between South Africa and Australia is a blow to the credibility of Test cricket, a game already struggling for its place in a changing landscape.
Under pressure from T20 cricket, shortened attention spans, TV money and with interest outside of South Africa, Australia and England ebbing away, this is a blow it can ill afford to take.
Test cricket has seen scandals like this before. The last time these two countries met in the winter of 2016-17, South Africa captain Faf du Plessis was found guilty of balltampering in Hobart, having applied saliva from a sweet on to the ball.
On that occasion, like so many before, Du Plessis argued his innocence, insisting he was shining the ball, and the debate remained lodged in a moral grey area.
What makes this one feel so different, so black and white, is that this was a deliberate attempt to cheat – Bancroft the tool employed to do so with his yellow tape hidden from the umpires after TV caught him in the act. And Smith admitted it, adding his senior players were in full agreement with their plan.
Test cricket is meant to be the pinnacle, the purest form of the game and the greatest examination of character, technique and skill. Smith, his leadership group and Bancroft have all failed it.
Rushing into damage limitation mode, Cricket Australia said he would step down as captain along with his vice-captain Warner for the remainder of this Test. It is an inadequate response, and the ICC’s decision to enforce a onematch suspension on Smith is only marginally less so.
The Australia captain refused to name his senior ‘leadership group’ who came to the conclusion that using sticky tape on the ball was right, but nobody is in much doubt it is Warner, above, Mitchell Starc, Nathan Lyon and Josh Hazlewood.
Australia managed to get prodigious reverse swing during the Ashes and for all that Stuart Broad said yesterday England had no suspicions they were altering the ball’s condition, eyebrows will remain raised.
The descent from the moral high ground does not stop there either.
Australia pride themselves on playing hard but fair – a contention some in the England camp and plenty in South Africa would suggest has been pushed to the absolute limit under Smith.
After Warner was abused by a spectator earlier in this Test, coach Darren Lehmann called his treatment “disgraceful”. James Sutherland, chief executive of Cricket Australia, added that other countries should replicate their own zero-tolerance approach to anti-social behaviour, a policy document which may have sat unread in Warner’s inbox.
It is that arrogance, from a nation which proclaims itself the guardians of cricket’s soul, that seems to have led their players to believe they are untouchable.
In the Ashes, the snarling personal abuse started in Brisbane and only let up when the Ashes were regained in Perth.
In South Africa, Warner would have come to blows with Quinton de Kock over comments about his wife had the two not been separated. It continued in Port Elizabeth, where verbal became physical in the middle when Smith and Kagiso Rabada clashed.
During the Ashes, Smith reached levels of batting mastery that drew gasps from the stands and comparisons with Donald Bradman from people who have seen some of the greatest exponents try to reach as high. It is one of the biggest disappointments that he will end this winter in disgrace, his authority weakened and his reputation sullied.
Smith and his fellow cheats will have to deal with fallout from this storm, which threatens to be toxic. But when the dust settles, all of them should bear in mind the fact that the game of Test cricket is only passing through their hands.
They are guardians of its integrity, its values and its future. As such they have dropped the ball and only time will tell how much damage has been done.
But what is certain is the next time Test cricket tries to defend itself against modernity as something pure and something worth fighting for, it will do so weakened.