Coach should have paid price for rotten culture
Cricket Australia still does not understand the enormity of the issue that Newlands revealed
Asign that, for all their rhetoric, the halfwits who run Cricket Australia still fail to grasp the enormity of the offence committed against the game at Newlands last weekend came with the announcement by James Sutherland, its chief executive, that Darren Lehmann, the coach who has presided over one of the most degenerate and unpopular teams in Test history, will keep his job. Australia must start tempering their disgrace, not adding to it: and that, among other things, means Lehmann admitting his part in creating an appalling culture, and going.
When Steve Smith resigned on Monday as captain of Rajasthan Royals, Manoj Badale, co-owner of the Indian Premier League side, said: “This will be a difficult time for Steve as well given how much he cares about the game.”
What? If somebody really cares about cricket – particularly about Test cricket, which has its front foot in the grave as it is – are there not better ways to show it than by cheating at its highest level? Can anyone who really “cares about the game” reconcile that concern with entering into a conspiracy that is cricket’s equivalent of a criminal enterprise? Can someone who “cares about the game” consciously enlist one of the most inexperienced members of the side to execute the act of a cheat?
And when that man who “cares about the game” so much is the team’s captain, can the corruption of other players, the betrayal of the game’s so-called spirit and the fraud it perpetrates on those who pay good money to follow a team, be classed as anything other than a selfish, stupid, arrogant contempt for “the game”?
Ball-tampering and other acts outside conventional sportsmanship have gone on ever since cricket was invented. There are three aspects of this episode, however, that make it especially toxic, degrading and damaging.
One is the element of conspiracy between captain, vice-captain and tamperer, who we are led to believe by Sutherland are the only ones aware of the offence. English law, and the legal systems of countries such as Australia that operate on similar principles, regard any form of conspiracy as gravely aggravating an offence and meriting a heavier sentence, not least because of the callousness implicit in premeditation. So it should be in this case.
Second, the Australian team had a poor reputation, even among their own supporters, long before the debacle at Newlands. Much has been written about the pious way in which they condemned the poor behaviour of others while engaging in it themselves. It raises suspicions that systematic cheating has been going on for some time.
Certainly Cricket Australia, which has proved utterly useless at maintaining the ethical standards of the team, and the International Cricket Council, whose obsession with money has relegated loftier considerations to a low priority and whose baroque disciplinary code is little short of ridiculous, should have officials scrutinising coverage of the recent Ashes series and the first two South Africa Tests.
Third, and most important, the public are abandoning Test cricket.
What parent will want to encourage their child to follow a game resembling a moral sink?
Why should they pay high prices for a ticket, plus all the costs of travelling, to watch a game made uncompetitive because of systematic cheating? Where does behaviour such as Australia’s leave the future of Test cricket? What parent will want to encourage their child to follow a game resembling a moral sink? Why should we want the next generation to grow up thinking it is routine to cheat?
Smith was painfully slow, on Saturday, to realise the enormity of what his team had done. He should have resigned on the spot. The conspiracy he and Warner orchestrated made his position untenable. It was untenable not least because the whole charade included lying to the umpires, mocking their authority.
The cricket authorities – the ICC and national boards – have brought this on themselves. For too long they have condoned unacceptable behaviour by punishing it leniently or not at all. Had the ICC been serious it would have put Cricket Australia on notice about the conduct of its team long ago, and urged key personnel changes.
Chronic failure to act has exacerbated a position where what used to be a spontaneous moment of opportunism in doctoring a ball has now become part of the team’s strategy. Once that happens, there is little point playing cricket at all.
Much of this behaviour has been imported into Test cricket by those who also play in the circus-like T20 game, which as it evolves bears less and less resemblance to the real game. The case for cricket to split into two codes – between those who wish to be sportsmen and those who wish to take part in a lucrative variety act – has been made yet again.
The lack of brains in the game – on the part of a stupid Australian captain and his “leadership group”, and on the part of craven administrators – means few of them yet grasp the gravity of events in Cape Town. Smith and his co-conspirators have kicked a game already fighting for survival. Smith, in continuing to protest that this has never happened before – something ex-players such as Michael Vaughan regard as absurd – shows he still does not get it. So what happens next has to hurt.
Smith and Warner should be banned from playing for Australia again. That would send a message that anyone inflicting deliberate damage on this struggling form of the game will be treated ruthlessly; for only by ruthless measures will the game survive much longer. Cameron Bancroft, given his inexperience and the way in which he appears to have been pressed into being a useful idiot, should have been banned for two years – on condition he tells all: and Cricket Australia should hire the best barrister in Australia to cross-examine his testimony.
The MCC is the guardian of the laws Smith and friends have ridden roughshod over. Its Laws Committee should be renamed its Laws and Ethics Committee, and should include not just the ex-cricketers who now dominate MCC committee elections, but professional people who know what it is to conduct business within a set of rules and act ethically. The roles of individual players, captains, umpires and administrators in this respect need to be carefully defined. On that basis, the ICC can overhaul its derisory disciplinary system.
I am not talking here about Test cricket for the sake of some romantic ideal. I am talking about Test cricket conducting itself in a way that attracts the confidence of the paying public, in order to ensure it can survive. Unless a serious example is made of the delinquent Australians, and the game restores a transparent ethical standard, it is finished.