Pressure on to sack big three
during their 4-0 win series over Joe Root’s England team — although the tourists were mystified as to how the home attack were able to produce such lavish reverse swing in comparison to that extracted by their own renowned exponents such as James Anderson and Chris Woakes.
It was also noted that the ball regularly went to Warner between overs, a time when umpires are on the move and less aware of where it is being transferred.
Pressure is mounting on Cricket Australia to permanently axe Smith, Warner and coach Darren Lehmann — they have the power to impose lifetime bans — with their positions now untenable in the light of such a flagrant abuse of the ICC’s code of conduct.
ICC chief executive David Richardson said: ‘The decision made by the leadership group of the Australian team to act in this way is clearly contrary to the spirit of the game, risks causing significant damage to the integrity of the match, the players and the sport itself and is therefore “serious” in nature.
‘As captain, Steve Smith must take full responsibility for the actions of his players and it is appropriate that he be suspended. The game needs to have a hard look at itself. In recent weeks we have seen incidents of ugly sledging, send-offs, dissent against umpires’ decisions, a walk-off, ball- ball tampering and some ordinary off-field behaviour.’
England are far from exempt when it comes to off- field issues but insiders remain adamant that Lehmann, Smith and Warner were in cahoots to make the most of the bizarre Jonny Bairstow headbutt incident with Bancroft before the series and a baseless accusation of balltampering against Anderson during the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne.
Now the heat is on the controversial Warner, who missed the start of the 2013 Ashes after a Cricket Australia ban for striking Root in a Birmingham nightspot.
He was publicly critical when South Africa captain Faf du Plessis was charged with balltampering for applying sticky saliva from a lolly during the 2016-17 series between the countries.
He said: ‘We hold our heads high and I would be very disappointed if one of our team members did that.’