Lehmann should players on first
NO ONE at Cricket Australia will be naive enough to believe the punishments meted out to the protagonists in the ball-tampering scandal yesterday signified a full stop on proceedings.
The weary look on chief executive James Sutherland’s face as he delivered news of likely suspensions for three players said as much.
But the announcement that the buck stopped with captain Steve Smith, vice-captain David Warner and opener Cameron Bancroft was stretching credibility to its limits.
Moreover, the fact that head coach Darren Lehmann was to stay in his job was nothing short of staggering.
If it is true that Australia have a problem and everyone from Sutherland to the Prime Minister of Australia believes they do, then Lehmann is central to it.
As such, his continuation in the role represents an obstacle to the work of the new broom clearly needed.
Yet Cricket Australia officials Pat Howard, team performance head, and Iain Roy, the integrity chief, who spent Monday interviewing players and coaching staff in Cape Town, have evidently satisfied themselves that Lehmann did not know of the plan.
Lehmann, who has been in the job since June 2013, may well have been in the dark initially for all that CA would be within their rights to ask why that was the case.
But if the coach did not know about the plan to use the yellow sticky tape on the ball in Cape Town, that 12th man Peter Handscomb was instructed seemingly by him on a walkie-talkie to go out to Bancroft and tell him he had been rumbled by the TV cameras would indicate he worked it out.
Either way his position looks untenable given his silence since. Lehmann is fortunate not to have been swept up in this first stage of the clean-up.
If yesterday’s initial findings smacked of a fudge, Australia still face a huge job in the coming months in trying to put their crumbling house in order – something which might more easily be achieved with fresh leadership.
They will Johannesburg find out how difficult in it will be to do that without their best batsman for as many months as CA see fit to suspend Smith, as seems likely.
But that could be nothing compared to having an angry Warner on the outside shooting in.
Suggestions yesterday Down Under were that Warner, 31, may have played his last game for Australia, such is the strength of feeling within the squad about him. If that is a realistic assessment of tensions, then publishers will be rubbing their hands in glee at the chance of a score-settling tell-all that is even more spicy than Kevin Pietersen’s scorched-earth effort when he was exiled.
It is undoubtedly true that Warner’s removal will do much to improve the atmosphere, with reports that the opener has been in barely disguised conflict with members of the squad already since the scandal was exposed. Before Sutherland’s announcement, the opener had reportedly removed himself from the players’ ‘Whatsapp’ group after tension spilled over about his behaviour and his perceived attempt to implicate several of them in the decision to cheat on the field.
Warner told Howard and Roy that all the players had been aware of the ball-tampering plan, apparently believing blame should be spread about the
Morris is all-weather champ for third time
LUKE MORRIS will be crowned all-weather champion jockey for the third time in five years at Lingfield’s big meeting on Good Friday.
Morris, pictured, is currently on 71 wins with a strike rate of 12 per cent and is 14 wins ahead of secondplaced Oisin Murphy
Morris said: “I’m very pleased to be champion jockey again, especially as there are plenty of good jockeys around. “I have tried to ride everywhere throughout the winter, including the Dubai Carnival, so it’s great. “There are a number of good trainers that have helped me through like Archie Watson and Michael Appleby. “My agent Neil Allan works very hard as well so it’s a real team effort.”