Shabby tactics call meaning of ‘sport’ into question

If cheating is now par for the course, we need a new definition of the word, writes Jonathan Bouquet.

AFTER the squalid events in the test series between South Africa and Australia, I seriously wonder whether we don’t desperately need a new word for sport.

Among Chambers’ many definitions are: to play, to frolic, recreation, pastime, to deviate from the norm. Only to the last definition do the events involving Steve Smith, David Warner, Cameron Bancroft and a piece of sandpaper seem to conform.

Yes, cheating has been with us in cricket since its earliest days, but by and large, it has been been one of the least noteworthy elements of the game, and for the most part it has been truly and exhilaratingly sporting.

But what are we to say now? Such shabby tactics, such lack of immediately admitting culpability, such connivance in blatant cheating.

Perhaps the only surprise is that Warner, one of the most unappealing characters to have represented Australia — and there have been a few contenders for that title — didn’t have an angle grinder hidden down his jockstrap.

The whole episode has been antisport as most of us would understand it and thoroughly messes with its definition. Mind you, the clambering in England to the moral high ground by the great, the good and Michael Vaughan has been almost as unedifying.

Just as depressing was a remark after last weekend’s Australian Grand Prix, which made me long for less calculating and tawdry times.

After Lewis Hamilton didn’t win, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff offered the following: ‘‘I think we have a software issue with the safety car data, a situation we haven’t had before with a special constellation of cars, one going at high speed and the other at slow speed.’’ Just as the Australian cricket team tried to take us for fools, Wolff seems to be fobbing us off with blather and drivel.

Admit it, Toto, your man lost. Stop dressing it up. Mind you, I long for the days when drivers had to race across the track, jump in their cars, start them and then hare off on a madcap dash; when drivers really were their own masters, not subject to endless pitlane information and diktat.

That was when sport was really sport.

❛ The whole episode has been antisport as most of us would understand it and thoroughly messes with

its definition.