A wicked way with a cricket ball

P 24

Even before the start of the third Test, Australia’s series with South Africa was proving a remarkably “ill-tempered” affair, said Nick Greenslade in The Sunday Times. The Australian vice-captain David Warner had almost come to blows with South Africa’s Quinton de Kock; South African bowler Kagiso Rabada had received a ban for barging into Australia captain Steve Smith. But in the third Test last Saturday, the series took “an extraordinary turn” when Australian batsman Cameron Bancroft was caught on camera tampering with the ball. He had rubbed it with a piece of tape, before trying to hide the tape down his trousers. Confronted by the umpires, he produced a sunglasses carry-bag from his pocket, suggesting it was all he had on him. But after the match, Smith admitted tampering was a strategy devised by what he referred to as Australia’s “leadership group”. He stood down as captain for the remainder of the Test and is banned from the fourth Test. The revelations have left Australia reeling – even the PM has weighed in – and made Smith’s position as captain appear untenable.

Cricketers know tampering is illegal, said John Townsend in The West Australian. They do it anyway to help their bowlers achieve reverse-swing: if one side of the ball gets rougher than the other, “it’ll swing in the opposite direction to traditional swing”. It’s hardly a new trick, said Malcolm Knox in The Sydney Morning Herald. Balltampering has long been an endemic form of cheating. The techniques vary: an Australian player was once caught using his nails to gouge the ball; Imran Khan liked to scratch it with a bottle top. Indeed, many great cricketers – everyone from Michael Atherton to Sachin Tendulkar – have been “caught up in tampering accusations”. So Smith’s insistence that this was a one-off is barely credible: England felt certain that the Australians were tampering during the recent Ashes series.

Until this scandal, Smith was a national hero, said Simon Wilde in The Sunday Times. The world’s top Test batsman, he has an extraordinary Test average of 61.37 – the third highest in history. But as captain, he has led “the most disliked side in the world game”, said Lawrence Booth in The Mail on Sunday. Australia combine a “sanctimonious attitude” towards other teams’ misdemeanours with “non-stop sledging”; Warner is regarded as “the nastiest piece of work in world cricket”. This fiasco confirms that “Australia’s cricket leadership has lost the plot”, said Andrew Wu in The Sydney Morning Herald. It will “almost certainly cost Smith his job”; the future of Darren Lehmann, the Australia coach, is “also in peril”. Australian cricket has hit “a new low”.