What’s the difference between South African, Indian, English and Australian cricket?
When a South African player, Faf du Plessis, gets nicked for ball tampering (twice) he is made captain. When Sachin Tendulkar does it he remains a demigod. England’s Mike Atherton became a few thousand quid poorer. In Australia we assemble an ugly mob who bay for the blood of our cricketers and get to work with the four-by-two and a packet of roofing nails.
These distinctions offer an unusual look at national identity. Put succinctly, Australians lost their minds and their judgment over a piece of tape, some pitch dirt and a cricket ball.
I’m not sure I would refer to what happened at Cape Town between 2.00pm and 2.42pm local time as cheating. It’s an unhelpful term given approximately 99 per cent of Australians don’t understand the vagaries of reverse swing and how a cricket ball tampered with or not may suddenly start swinging around corners or stubbornly refuse to shift one millimetre off its trajectory.
It was not cheating by any legal definition. Broadly speaking, common law defines cheating as a contrived act set to deny people of proprietary rights. In Australia, where criminal law refers to cheating, it usually falls into the category of obtaining financial benefit by an act of deception. In the UK, where laws for cheating on the sporting field were brought in recently and used in the prosecution of Pakistan cricketers, Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif, Smith and Co.’s actions would not, by definition, rouse the interest of the plod.
When madness abounds, it is sensible to return to some measure of sanity by using the terms the rules stipulate. It was a code violation grade two (of four with four being the most serious).
Full column here.
For me, terribly sorry for Smith the distress he was in awful stupid to go along with it but as captain he has to carry the can, Sutherland and his board need to take a long hard look at themselves, time for a clean out at the top boys.
Warner good riddance, there was no need to drag the wife and kids in front of the cameras, took guts for Smith and Bancroft to front a press conference.
I was just about to say will Cook get to double figures in Christchurch…….nah, gone fer 2😳
Forgot, Langer or Gillespie? some are saying both.
Brendon McCullum? He could be a very good choice.
Hadn’t thought about a non Oz coach, might be the better way.
Bairstow on 96………done it now.
He’d go pretty well Jack but I’d prefer to see Langer.
Oh come on Tracy, enough with the Warner bashing. How can an attempt to leave the Arrival lounge by Warner, and deflecting the press hounds in preference to getting his kids home to bed, constitute dragging them in front of the cameras? Do you know a secret way out?
Tracy, he was leaving the airport and the wife and kids were on the plane with him. One of the blonde ambulance chasers from Nein has opined the same thing. I figure he didn’t have an option, and I do know about the back door., which Smith was not given the luxury of in Joburg either. Why not?
Warner’s delay in holding a presser was smart. Still a tough thing to do but better than facing the pack at the airport. We need to cut him some slack too.
He sits at the pointy end, it’s called the VIP exit.
So how was it dragging the wife and kids in front of the cameras?
Bit tough on Warner Tracey.
He had just gotten off a plane with two kids and a wife who is blaming herself for what has happened. His priority was to get the kids home to bed.
That whole family has copped and incredible about of rubbish in SA and deserve a bit of space,
Have a read of Chris Barrett in the SMH.
This sorry saga is not over yet as there are many many rotten apples in the cricketing barrel.
Took guts all right Tracy. But was it fair to let them be skinned, jetlagged after a tumultuous week and long flight?
In the end though it may have turned the tide of public sympathy their way. It was awful to watch.
CA have left them out to dry it seems.
Maybe a few months working with kids, better still under-privileged kids – and playing at club level will bring them, and perhaps the whole game, back to reality. Bancroft and Smith are too good to lose from the game.
Listening to a talk on the infamous underhand ball – Chappell reckoned it has affected his whole life since and probably wrecked his marriage. Not good.
One or two things emerge from this. The reaction to the ball tampering shows how dangerously sport obsessed Australia is; that we can be whipped into a white hot rage over this but narry a whisper about our corrupt and incompetent political class. Are we so apathetic that we will take it out on a few cricketers instead of applying fire to the feet of the government?
The increasingly toxic, sledging driven, win at all costs Australian cricket culture, has been well documented, but long ignored if the team is winning. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi, right?
Excellent post Uncle Quentin.
Couldn’t agree more Wiss. Great post UQ.
Yep!
Something is rotten in the State of Australia.
If Ali and Tiger Woods can make comebacks then surely Smith can. I doubt we’ve even heard the full story as there was talk y’day that Smith may not have even known about it. If that is the case he is paying a huge price. Warner will be getting closer scrutiny and a commentator contrasted his lack of a press conference to Smith’s and Bancroft’s, suggesting it said something about his character. The one bloke it is hard not to feel for is Bancroft, 4 months out from his debut. But despite what som people have suggested this is a long way from being a tragedy.
Why do they keep calling Crofty a kid…he is 25 FFS. I think Ian Craig played for Oz when he was about 17 my dad sed
You seem agitated BASSY, does it really matter?
Yep!
He knew precisely what he was doing which was ingratiating himself with the hierarchy – which spells volumes with the state of Australian cricket and how it works.
The only person who is acting like a real man is Warner.
Yes, a simple camera shot casually capturing a cricketer’s crotch and cricket itself has suddenly careered to a crossroads. While careers have become casualities, commentators and critics are clueless as to whether the current crises was caused by custom, culture or convention.
I say C ot C, C must be your favourite letter old Chap, Cricket observer & Canny Contributer.
Reckon the poppy farms in Tassie will be booming this year as so many poppies are falling to the scythe elsewhere.
Yes Mack, it’s been a pity to observe and painful to perceive that a few of the poppies have been prematurely plucked off their perch ; presumably for papering the pill before it possibly hit the pitch.
Personally, I think the public posturing by the powers to be has been pathetic, and I positively wouldn’t give them a pass mark for their punitive punishment processes.
Scene: Sitting in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney at the cafe under the trees eating lunch – part of which was a bowl of chips.
I had one in my hand and was about to bite it in two.
My face gets slapped and the chip disappears.
A kookaburra had obviously lined up the chip and was about to swoop it on it from behind and had past the point of no return.
I have a minor cut on the lip and a couple of minor scratches.
After 10 hrs, the face still hurts a bit from where it got belted by the wing.
I have seen them take sausages off a bar-b-que but never out of one’s mouth.
Quite fumy really – the look of astonishment on the couple at the next table, I am told, was a sight to behold 🙂
And they are a pretty solid bird, usually there’s one watching when I’m in the garden for any juicy morsels I might dig up for them.
Be thankful you weren’t at Southbank in Brisbane. The Ibis’ would have taken the chip and half the arm holding it.
Golly JS, scary stuff. I was out with a mate once on a country road and we came across a kooka that had been hit by a car. Stunned, in the middle of the road. I grabbed it and we headed for the vets. Got to town and it woke up, then started showing dissent, mouth wide open. By jeez they’re big when they’re in your lap in a mini! Scary buggers.
At Balmoral beach a few weeks ago, my 2 year old grand daughter had one swoop down and take a blue berry that she was eating out of her hand as neat as.
Smith’s homecoming press conference was hard to watch. Bancroft did better. Warner not game or not bothered to front up.
Smith is going to have to toughen up though – this is just the beginning.
Yeah, and it’s so easy too.
I think that’s the hardest one over.
I’d like to see Smith come back from this and possibly even Captain again. As for Warner……….
What next from righteous, moral and perpetually outraged?
Four score and five years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new notion, conceived in Adelaide , and dedicated to the proposition that only one team out there is playing cricket.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that notion, or any notion so conceived or so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those whose lives we took that that notion might live.
time for nother punch up…jl. dizzy or punter?? …Harbhajan Singh for mine…foight
Smith and Warner were put on different flights. They need to grow up.
Probaby a good thing Dwight. They needed to be alone I would think. Hard week at the office. Why would you want to sit on a plane for 24hrs of collective misery.
I think the hysteria about the ball tampering is to do with the general behaviour and attitude of the Aussie team.
“There’s been no shortage of people lining up to speak about the arrogance of the team that has been allowed to build and fester. The team has developed a reputation for being quick to called out others’ faults without ever seeing its own. Those who watch these things closely, from commentators to former captains, have spoken of “the bubble” and the fact that you’ve floated so far from the reality of normal people that you no longer know what reality is.”
Tracey Holmes on the ABC
i think that is fair criticism of the team myself, especially re sledging. there are no lines, or at least perpetrators don’t get to set them.
they got it wrong for the same reason in an acrimomonius Test against India in Sydney all those years ago, Ricky should have taken up Kumble’s offer to sort it out privately, particularly as Symonds and Buzz Lightyear were themselves serial offenders.
i know the rules said he should report it but we didn’t grow up running to the teacher.
instead we had a similar outbreak of collective madness with Roebuck demanding Pontings dismissal forthwith etc.
btw, that’s always been among my favourite sledges, calling Hayden after the earnest and muscular but slightly dim co-star of the Toy Story franchise.
another English one, as most of the amusing but cutting sledges seem to be.
At least back in Sydney Ponting didn’t get the sack, but ohh well, its done now and it could have been worse.
I have been interested to note that the sack him and publicly crush him team, Peter Ftiz and Mike Carlton, Rohan Connolly etc are now scrambling to offer sympathy to Smith.
Lovely, back to the footy for me.
Wasn’t Mike one of those forever traumatised by having to explain to his young son what Smith had done? Oh, the agony of it.
Yep, the same Carlton who was fired for abusing Fairfax customers. Don’t think self-reflection is his forte.
I agree Jack, it’s world cricket getting it off their chest. (Has Kohli commented?) And I think that (a) ‘There but for the grace of God, and (b) they know it’s been overdone.
Is it we the people or is it just the meeja??
The comments from the sub continent seem to have been very few, more ex Oz and England.
Bairstow on 97 and the buggers have just gone in, what’s the betting he’s out first ball tomorrow.
don’t think it is just the media, twitter has been dripping in sanctimony.
Some English, Irish and American friends have identified an amusing misconception among a lot of Aussies that they are culturally pre-destined to play hard but fair.
I don’t get it myself, my reading of it is that we have been bending rules out shape since about January 26 1788.
and really I think it is a fairly useful attitude to life and most sports.
Heck, they don’t even require you anymore to be a criminal to move here! Just had another background check–and I’m still not a criminal.
Although, I have to say that the fact the AFP lost this one–twice–doesn’t fill me with a lot of confidence. I mean it’s not as if we rely on them for important things like counter-terrorism. The folks in Canberra I interacted with were good about finally getting it to me though.
Jack, I think Tracey Holmes hits the nail on the head, but then she often does. I believe that the Australian cricket team have for quite some time behaved badly and did need a dose of reality. The sledging for a start has always been unnecessary and although I have great respect and admiration for Steve Waugh, it really was bad under his captaincy. He is still my favourite cricketer btw, not because of his cricketing skills so much, but he is a great philanthropist.
Having said that, I didn’t watch Steve Smith’s press conference (fairly easy to avoid when not in Australia), it sounds quite harrowing, both for Steve and for people watching it. I do hope someone will be looking out for his mental health.
There are an awful lot of people who now really want to move on, but social media is still milking the issue, hopefully these people will find someone else to preach to about their impeccable morals and ethics.
Not sure if it’s possible Penny but surely Smith would be able to fulfil a role with the team somehow for 12mths. It’s not as if one more hanger onerer is going to be noticed there’s bloody heaps now.
Good point Razor. I have finally caught up with all the press conferences and the media “stuff”…in error actually as the Australia+ network here advertised the Gold Coast Suns/Carlton match and I had tuned into watch that. For God’s sake, I have never, ever seen such self-righteous garbage from some media types and the actual agonizing spectacle of Smith and Warner’s press conferences.
As UQ said, why is everyone so het up about this and not our politicians grubby antics?
We seem to turn very quickly on our heroes, when the reality of the situation is far less serious when looked at in the light of day.
Personally I am fairly horrified that Matthew Lodge is allowed to play for the Brisbane Broncos after what he did in New York, I have mentioned Wayne Carey before, but the double standards on offer here in the Australian sporting arena are also painful to watch.
I was a Broncos supporter from day one and know Paul White and Wayne Bennett personally Penny. From the moment they signed Lodge I became a Nth Qld supporter. His signing was absolutely disgraceful. Unforgivable.
Good on you Razor, I find it inexplicable that they could think it was worth signing him. He avoided a 12 month jail term with a plea bargain and has not attempted to pay one dollar back off his $2mill fine. There have been quite a few AFL players that should have been charged for various incidents in the past, but then the AFL decides to stand down a couple of their executives for conducting consensual affairs with work colleagues…..just doesn’t make sense to me.
Excellent last para. Well said Penny.
Well said Jack, but things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get better.
This from ACA President Greg Dyer, “The ACA offers it’s full endeavours to an independent cultural examination, diagnosis and ultimately remedy which must occur in the days, weeks, MONTHS and YEARS ahead,” he said. “Australian cricket must remind itself of it’s PURPOSE, that cricket is a teacher of an important Australian life lesson and that is to play with honour first and always.” (The shoutiness is mine).
I can’t wait for the authorities to launch into a bit of Kant and the Categorical Imperative.
ps The Mocker knocks it out of the park today too.