Australian cheats have brought Test cricket into disrepute

There’s quite a long list of Test cricketers who have been found guilty of tampering with the ball, and been punished accordingly. We all know it shouldn’t be done, and we all know it has been done throughout the history of the game. Actually, some ball-tampering used to be legal. I recall reading about John Goddard, the West Indian captain in 1950, rubbing a new ball on the pitch so that his brilliant young spinners, Sonny Ramadhin and Alf Valentine, could get a better grip of the hard new ball. No matter, bowlers have been “improving the cherry” since W G Grace was a boy.

So why such a fuss about the latest Aussie misdemeanours? There can be no surprise that the English and South African Press are having a field day. No surprise if Indian journalists are doing likewise, and every justification if Pakistani ones are cock-a-hoop – given the insults directed at Pakistan cricketers over the years. But this time it’s not just the opposition. Australians themselves are furious, proclaiming themselves shocked, outraged and ashamed. In a matter of days their captain Steve Smith has gone from the pedestal to the pillory.

The first reason is that this was, in the words of Smith’s predecessor as captain, Michael Clarke, a case of “premeditated cheating”. Clarke was never everybody’s favourite in his playing days, but in attaching the adjective “premeditated” to the noun “cheating”, he has gone to the heart of the matter. If a bowler, toiling on an easy-paced wicket and unable to get the ball to swing while batsmen pile on the runs, thinks “what the hell?” and “improves” the condition of the ball to give himself a chance of getting a wicket, we might condemn him, but accept that people make bad decisions in the heat of the moment.

It was different in Cape Town however. Here we have Smith, his vice-captain David Warner and other –unnamed – members of the “Senior Management Group” sitting in the dressing-room and discussing what they can do to shift the balance of the match. “We need reverse swing”. “But the ball’s not effing reversing”, says, perhaps, a disgruntled senior bowler. “Then we gotta make it reverse. Question is how.”

So that’s the first thing. They’re not just cheating. They’re plotting to cheat.
And the second, to my mind, is worse still.

Who’s to draw the short straw and administer the treatment to the ball? Will the captain volunteer to do so himself? Of course not. The vice-captain then? Not a hope? One of the bowlers who may hope to benefit? Certainly not.

So the short straw is handed to the junior member of the team, the inexperienced Cameron Bancroft. Maybe he’s told it’s his duty. Maybe he’s told his “volunteering” will put him in credit (with the Senior Management Group). Maybe he even steps forward, eager to please, and says “give me the daggers”, though this last seems unlikely if discussion of the conspiracy was restricted to the Senior Management Group.

Who knows? Whichever it is, it stinks.

The whole thing isn’t just cheating. It’s also shabby.

It all seems to me more contemptible than the Pakistan spot-fixing scandal which among other things cost the brilliant 18 year-old Mohammed Amir six months in a Young Offenders Institution and a five year ban from cricket. The Pakistani cricketers were set up, made mugs off – willing mugs in the case of the captain and another senior player –but if it hadn’t been a sting , then the only real losers from their agreement to bowl no balls would have been the bookies.

Be that as it may, the Pakistani cricketers were severely punished, the severity being justified as a deterrent. How will Smith, Warner & Co fare? Smith will surely lose the captaincy, but, but…if he and Warner are out of Test cricket for as long as Mohammed Amir was, you may look to see a cow leaping over this month’s full moon.

For here’s the rub, the dilemma for Cricket Australia officials and indeed for the game’s governing body. Smith and his senior management group have brought the game, and Test cricket itself, into disrepute. That’s undeniable. But Test cricket is struggling – even though this admittedly ill-tempered series in South Africa has produced riveting cricket, far more enthralling than a host of ODIs or T20 capers. So what’s to be done with the miscreants? How will Test cricket in Australia fare if their two best batsmen, Smith and Warner, are treated as if they were Pakistanis and given the long bans they may deserve? Not well, not well at all. So a sharp rap on the knuckles, a bit of fudge, and a fine they will recoup in a couple of weeks in the IPL, seem likely.