LEHMANN KNEW HIS TIME WAS UP

IT WAS his culture, created on his watch, so ultimately Darren Lehmann had to go. he as good as admitted this, 24 hours earlier. ‘I need to change and we need to change the boundaries within which we play,’ he said. ‘There is a need for us to alter some of the philosophies.’

Indeed — but whose philosophies? however upsetting it may have been for Lehmann to see Steve Smith, his captain, break down at his press conference earlier in the day, realistically he must have known long before where the buck had to stop. Smith captained Australia on the field, but the ethical code they took out there came from management.

Whatever Lehmann knew, or didn’t know, about ball- tampering specifically, he was responsible for the climate in which very ordinary decisions were made.

he was responsible for a climate that fostered some pretty brutal sledging and for the falsely high moral ground that set his team up for such a fall. James Sutherland, the chief executive, is a lucky man, too — it seems the full force of this calamity has dawned on Smith and Lehmann more clearly than it has on him. For if Lehmann knew the right course of action, why did Sutherland spend so long protecting him? SOMERSET made the correct decision over Cameron Bancroft. Banned by his country for cheating, it was unthinkable that he could then play the summer over here. There is a clear path for his return in time for the Ashes, if selected, and it is for Australian grade cricket to begin this rehabilitation, not an English county. NO MATTER how many worthy financial regulations football passes, economic success at clubs is very often just a matter of good or bad business management. Barnsley put no sell-on clauses into the deal that took Alfie Mawson to Swansea, and may now miss out on a huge windfall if he moves to one of the Premier League’s elite this summer. Yet when Mawson was sold to Swansea, Barnsley handed 40 per cent of his fee — £2million of £5m — to Brentford. That was the clue, right?