Australia’s ugly culture: to win at all costs — even when they lose

Smith, a wonderful player, has been cursed with defending the indefensible — the Australian way

● The Australians don’t want the stump mics to be live when the ball is dead, but they want to be heard at an appeal that they have no right to be part of.

They want to “play the game hard and in the right spirit”, but they don’t want anyone else to be party to deciding what that is.

They want to “play against the best”, but they admit they try to remove their opponents from the game.

What the Australians don’t want is a fair contest, and they have the brains not to say so.

Or is it that they don’t have the balls to say so? Or the honesty?

Steve Smith sounded like he had sacrificed his better judgment to a culture in which nothing matters more than winning, never mind how, in his bleating about being locked out of Kagiso Rabada’s appeal hearing.

“It’s pretty interesting when you’re, I guess, looking for evidence and those kind of things,” Smith told the Australian reporters on tour. “The other person involved not getting asked about it is pretty interesting, I thought.”

The fault in Smith’s logic is that he isn’t, in a legal sense, the other person involved.

His shoulder did indeed meet Rabada’s. But Smith wasn’t charged — perhaps fortuitously for him and his team — and that’s where his involvement in the saga ended.

The “other person” in terms of the appeal were the umpires, who did attend the hearing. The argument was between them, because they laid the original charge, and Rabada, who was appealing the verdict.

Quite rightly, Jeff Crowe, the match referee who found Rabada guilty at the first hearing, also wasn’t at the appeal: he had already made plain his view.

“I found that there was contact between Rabada and Smith, and in my judgment the contact by Rabada was inappropriate, and deliberate,” Crowe was quoted as saying in an International Cricket Council release.

“He had the opportunity to avoid the contact, and I could not see any evidence to support the argument that the contact was accidental.”

Michael Heron, who heard the appeal, didn’t quite agree: “The key issue is whether Mr Rabada made ‘inappropriate and deliberate physical contact’ with Mr Smith. I am not ‘comfortably satisfied’ that Mr Rabada intended to make contact and I therefore find him not guilty of the charge.”

Crowe played 39 tests for New Zealand, then ran a golf holiday company in Florida. Since 2004 he has been a match ref.

Heron, who admits that he’s “always loved rugby and cricket . . . but I’m a terrible player”, is among New Zealand’s preeminent lawyers and has served as that country’s solicitor-general.

Crowe is strong-minded but fair and personable; a thoroughly solid oke. A match left in his hands is in good hands.

But who between him and someone like Heron is better suited to parse matters central to lawyering? Bastardly murky things like intent?

Not that we would need Heron’s services if cricketers stuck to playing cricket as it should be played.

Instead, the game is blessed with flawed figures like Smith, a wonderful player who has been cursed with defending the indefensible — the Australian way.

Perhaps it’s human frailty that Smith seems to have forgotten that he also wasn’t at Rabada’s initial hearing, and thus was not afforded a chance to give his input as “the other person involved”.

Or is he ignoring that fact because the outcome went the way he and his team hoped and removed a feared opponent from the equation?

Better question: why can’t Australians shut up and play cricket and leave the policing of the broadcast guidelines, the umpiring, the match refereeing and the judicial commissioning to the broadcasters, umpires, match referees and judicial commissioners?

Because they can’t. They must win. This we know from having put up with them for too bloody long.

What’s South Africa’s cricket culture? Who can tell, especially when we’re always so close to it.

Perhaps it’s simply to shut up and play.