Australian cricket’s cultural change must start at head office
As both the hysteria of the ball tampering and raw emotion of the Steve Smith press conference subside it will be interesting to see what sort of reflective process is undertaken by Cricket Australia on the Australian test team’s culture.
One could argue that what we’ve seen in this incident is not a oneoff, but rather a culmination of decades of Australian cricket culture evolving negatively from confidence to defiance onto misplaced aggression and finally hubris. The hard but fair so expected of our teams and so successful in driving Australian success in many sporting endeavours has been replaced by an ugly, ‘‘win the war, torch the village’’ approach.
The great irony is that while Cricket Australia wrings its hands of on-field accountability, preferring to measure its performance in terms of TV revenue, sponsorship and Big Bash League receipts, it has lost sight of a team that is quite simply unloved locally and outright disliked globally. CEO James Sutherland should be held to account for failing to provide governance over the team’s leadership and behaviour and not foreseeing how this ill-will would explode once the team finally slipped up, as it did so remarkably in Cape Town.
The process arguably started in the Steve Waugh era. Once the West Indies were finally conquered and they and England fell away, the Australian team suddenly morphed into a self-proclaimed, living, breathing demonstration of Australian manhood.
Matt Hayden’s hypocrisy as an on-field Christian blessing himself post-century (an act never replicated at Shield level), while developing renown as the worst sledger in the team, earned him few friends in the cricketing world. Glenn McGrath’s explosion against Ramnaresh Sarwan that almost came to blows was self-inflicted. As David Warner found out with Quinton de Kock, what level of arrogance warrants being aggrieved when someone relentlessly abused crosses your self-applied ‘‘line’’ in response?
To see Nathan Lyon descend to a media taunter pre-the last Ashes series was an ominous, sad sign. Cameron Bancroft and Steve Smith’s embarrassing press conference at the ‘Gabba and Warner’s lack of grace upon making his century on Boxing Day (after being reprieved by the third umpire the ball previous), were major turnoffs in the Australian public’s mind. And then there were the two giant hands on the presentation dais post the fifth test. The hubris and gracelessness had extended to Cricket Australia.
The punishments have far outweighed the offence but that’s not the point. Former prime minister Paul Keating once referenced Australian voters waiting with baseball bats for the chance to vote out his government and the same principle applied to the Australian cricket team. Their conduct in this, and the recent Ashes series, was as embarrassing and excessive as the execution and defence of the ball tampering was dumb. They are being punished for a catalogue of conduct breaches, but the buck cannot stop at the three players and coach Darren Lehmann.
Sutherland’s position is untenable. If he plays the card that commercial success is his purview, then the Magellan sponsorship cancellation and the failure to achieve their initial TV right’s expectations should be held up as failings in this regard.
As for Warner, a batsman of rare talent, but a man who took advantage of a young player keen to please. As graceless a cricketer to ever represent Australia has now taken down himself, his captain, his team and his country. But even he has a defence. The Australian team and corporate hierarchy were more than happy for him to play the pit bull and continue a philosophy honed over many years.
The Sun-Herald