Heard the one about tampering with cricket pay deals?
An Australian and the national chairperson of the ANC walk into a hotel bar on Saturday night. The Australian asks for a bottle of red wine. And some Coke. Two cans. He mixes the two into a glass and drinks it.
He sits quietly, eyeing the bottle. He has an awardwinning mullet. It is shiny and lush, long and lovingly brushed at the back with just the right amount of spikiness on top.
He’s not in a happy mood. It has not been a good day to be an Australian and he is at The Cullinan, the same hotel as the Australian cricket team. He launches into a rant about Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft to anyone who will listen. He sounds confused and hurt. He stops, picks up his bottle of wine and leaves, headed to his room, his mullet trailing him like a wedding train.
At a table in the corner of the bar sits Gwede Mantashe. He’s down for the Cape Town International Jazz Festival. He’s wearing a checked shirt, smiling and joking. He seems in a good place.
Twenty-four hours later David Warner sat down at that same table and “swilled” Champagne, according to one report. It was not a good place for Warner. He did the swilling alone. A sneaky picture taken by a journalist shows his head peeking out above the bar stools. There is no sign of the alleged Champagne. Perhaps that was the moment he left the Australian team’s WhatsApp group. Nobby No-Mates drowning his sorrows with a drink made for celebration.
On Monday Warner, who said in an interview in December that he never drinks to excess any more as he has two kids and it would be hard looking after them with a hangover, was talking to Australian journalists at the other end of the bar.
He wore a resigned smirk and didn’t look all that put out. Perhaps he had no idea of what was to come and just how vicious the backlash was against a player and, by association, a team that has developed an ugly reputation.
The Guardian journalist Barney Ronay tweeted on Wednesday that “somehow Cricket Australia (CA) has achieved the impossible and made me feel sorry for David Warner”. The one-year ban he received and the subsequent damning statement that he would never be considered for a leadership role in an international Australian cricket team was “a bit ridiculous”.
There is context to the harshness. CA is in the midst of negotiating its broadcast deal. It wants more and the broadcasters, naturally, don’t want to pay too much more. Ball-tampering — or cheating, to use the word CA CE James Sutherland would not say — may be bad for business.
CA needed to show the TV companies it was taking decisive action as the storm raged on.
Warner and Smith were at the forefront of a salary battle between Australian players and CA in 2017. There was talk of a strike, with Warner suggesting that Australia might “not have a team for the Ashes”.
CA wanted to change the revenue-sharing structure. Cricket SA said much the same thing recently, in a vague attempt to wrest total control of the game back.
That may be partly why CA has gone so hard at the three in the ball-tampering kerfuffle. Money and power. The baggy greens are a deity in Australia, sacred and mythical. The players have given CA a lever to take back control of a team.
And not forgetting the money. Smith is on an R11m annual retainer to play for Australia and gets a further R127,000 per match. Warner would be on the same pay scale. That’s a grand saving for CA. The timing of this could not have been worse for Smith, Warner and Bancroft.
Three Australians walked into a bar this week. Their lives and Australian cricket may never be the same again.