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If you’re going to do a job, do it properly – so it goes with the amateurish Australian ball-tampering caper.
These overpaid clowns could have stuck some adhesive to their pants, then some white-coloured sandpaperish adhesive over that.
Then they could have pretended to polish the ball, making one side as rough guts and swinging more than at any debauched party.
The offending items could then have been discarded in the dressing-room bin.
But no, this was amateur hour. The Aussies can’t even cheat properly, let alone perform to their pre-series hype.
Australian cricket has descended a long way since Steve Waugh became the first football captain of an Aussie Test team.
It will be recalled Waugh was like the rugby-league skipper who was the soul of gentlemanly conduct off the field, escorting little old ladies and small children across the road.
Once he crossed the sideline, that same skipper got the fever and became a ruthless, take-no-prisoners competitor.
That was the aggressive Waugh and the spirit he fostered, but Australian cricket had been heading that way unchecked for many seasons.
But Waugh spoke of the mental disintegration of the opposition, not the physical disintegration of the ball. There were limits.
Since retirement, Waugh has devoted himself to much good works, completing the football analogy.
Current captain Steve Smith should be given the chance to do good works too, and so should members of the leadership group if any are found to have been involved in the tampering plot.
There is no question of Smith’s retaining the captaincy, nor playing after the third Test.
(Photo by Paul Kane/Getty Images)
He can captain any co-conspirators for a year out of the game as they do good works, helping to maintain suburban cricket grounds and other tasks deemed necessary.
For being a newcomer and his honesty about being the agent of the tale of the tape, Cameron Bancroft can be let off lightly, missing the last Test and any cricket for the winter.
And innocent he may be, but the buck stops with coach Darren Lehmann.
He’s the man at the top of the order and this culture grew under him and must stop with him.
Lehmann should be thanked for his service and not employed in a coaching-managerial role again.
Sticky wicket indeed.
Cricket Australia shouldn’t wait for the ICC. It should tear through the order now and show it’s fair dinkum about standards the Test team was once known for.
Need it be said it wouldn’t have happened in Richie Benaud’s or Donald Bradman’s day.
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