Sporting pride comes before a fall for the victims of arrogance
SOBBING before his nation’s media, his dad standing behind him, one of the finest batsmen – maybe the finest batsman – of his generation, you’d have to have had a heart of stone not to feel sorry for Steve Smith.
The now ex-Australia captain, at the centre of a ball-tampering scandal, fronted up after being variously described as a “national disgrace” and “deplorable” by the country’s press.
While he did not conceive the balltampering plan (that part was played by his vice-captain, the reviled David Warner), as captain, Smith was charged with knowledge of it, failing to stop it and trying to mislead the match officials over the plan, as well as making misleading comments in a hastily-arranged press conference after footage of the tampering emerged.
Australian cricket has felt the full force of fury from its rivals around the world, as well as the cricketing public in Australia itself.
The sport itself is going through something of a self-examination, with the behaviour of the arrogant Aussies (that’s how this side’s now widely being described) over recent years being given plenty of scrutiny.
What was once traditional Australian hard-but-fair play on the cricket field has crept into an unseemly kind of sporting hubris – exemplified by the ball-tampering incident but also seen in the spikiness shown towards South Africa in the current test series, as well as England during the Ashes this winter.
There have been other incidents in recent years.
“The Aussies didn’t need to do this, but they did,” wrote former Australia coach Mickey Arthur.
“It’s the result of an issue that had been festering away and should’ve been addressed a long time ago. It was always going to end this way. An incident like this had to happen for the necessary cultural shift to take place.”
He described the country’s cricket team as being “in an ivory tower for too long”.
In an environment where the pressure is on to win, people – usually arrogant people who’ve been told their whole lives that they’re the best at what they do – push the boundaries. Rules are bent as far as possible. Sometimes they snap. Sport is bedevilled by this. Cycling’s the most obvious victim of concerted and constant cheating, but it’s not the only one. Athletics, boxing, rugby, basketball – they’ve all been plagued by their own forms of skulduggery down the decades.
With money comes ever more sophisticated means of cheating – a bit of sand-covered tape to rough up a cricket ball is nothing to the elaborate technology that has been used in cycling. But it’s all a means to the same end.
And then, almost always, it comes crashing down when it gets found out, when a whistleblower whistles, when a cunning reporter goes undercover. Whatever.
Steve Smith is a victim as a well as a perpetrator.
He’s a 28-year-old man. The captain of his country, but a naive young adult just finding his way in life as well. He’s the product of his environment – a nurtured talent who might well have felt beyond moral culpability.
The howling outrage being venomously directed Smith’s way may be considered justified in the immediate aftermath of the ball-tampering scandal.
In its totality, it almost certainly isn’t.