How has obnoxious Lehmann escaped?
What a cop-out. What a disappointment. So, the coach did not know his captain and his deputy were hatching a plan to cheat? how about the bowlers? they must have been surprised when the ball started reverse swinging, then.
Even if James Sutherland and company do the right thing today by banning Steve Smith and David Warner for a year, australia have got this badly wrong already.
there is no way coach Darren Lehmann should have kept his job. this is a cover-up.
the nasty, arrogant, aggressive, old- school culture of australian cricket needs to change and Lehmann epitomises that. he played a major part in creating it after australia had ditched Mickey arthur in 2013. Lehmann is the architect of all that’s gone wrong.
the coach allowed Smith and Warner to hurtle out of control and become enemies of the sport.p he was complicit, at the very least, in Warner becomingng vice- captain in 20155 against all sensible judgment. It could even have been his idea. that was the moment it all started going wrong.
Remember, too, that Lehmann called Srii Lanka ‘black c****’ duringg his playing days. he alsolso went on radio while coachach of his national side and told australia supporters to abuse England’s Stuart Broad until he cried. It was virtually an incitement to violence. the warning signs were there for australia but they ignored them.
the people who should be crying now are lovers of the game in australia, who have been so hurt and horrified by what has unravelled in the last three days. truly, this has become one of the biggest scandals in cricket history.
It says everything about Lehmann that he has not resigned already. he should have fallen on his sword the moment tV showed him on his walkie-talkie telling 12th man Peter handscomb to get on the field at Newlands and tell Cameron Bancroft his attempt at ball-tampering had been rumbled.
Clearly Lehmann was a popular figure as a player. You only had to listen to the reaction of former bowler Ryan Sidebottom on BBC Radio 5 Live after Sutherland’s weak utterings to know Lehmann was extremely well regarded during his days at Yorkshire.
But that was then and this is now. this was australia’s big chance and they have blown it already, even if they run Smith and Warner out of town today.
things won’t change significantly until Lehmann’s contract runs out after next year’s ashes series in England and he will presumably walk away scot free.
australia did get one thing right. tim Paine is, according to one observer close to the situation, ‘just about the only decent bloke in the team’. Unless they went outside and appointed someone such as George Bailey as their Brendon McCullum lumMcCullum ffigure, Paine was the onlonly viable option as the nenew captain. What a rise this is for PPaine. Not long ago he was playing for Banbury in Oxfordshire and only a year ago he ccame close to packing it all in to go to work for cricricket ball manufacturer KooKookaburra. his ssurprise recall for the ashes has now led to him being charged with sorting out this sorry mess. Good luck with that, tim.
When McCullum changed the culture of New Zealand cricket, he was assisted by a coach in Mike hesson who sang from the same song-sheet. Lehmann is just full of bum notes.
australia should have appointed Ricky Ponting as coach yesterday. It is a no-brainer. and if not him then Jason Gillespie, or see whether trevor Bayliss could be coaxed away from the last 18 months of his England contract.
Instead, they have paid lip service to the crisis and let Lehmann get away with it. Cricket australia have failed the first significant test of whether they are serious about repairing their shattered image.