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Had the ICC shown the governance it has been charged with since 1909 as the Imperial Cricket Conference, then as the International Cricket Conference in 1965 and finally as the International Cricket Council since 1989, ball tampering would have been outlawed long ago.
Officially Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft are the 15th players charged with tampering but the first to be hit with the kitchen sink – and it took Cricket Australia, not the ICC, to let fly with the sink.
Smith and Warner copped 12-month bans, Bancroft nine, but it are the financial setbacks that have magnified the suspensions. Smith and Warner stand to lose up to $4 million of income a year with the IPL adding its ban and individual sponsors tearing up quality contracts.
The accumulation effect was never envisaged but it totally understandable as the trio has been universally branded as cheats.
But there have been other cheats dating back to 1976 who not only survived with little to no punishment but were never pilloried by the media as Smith, Warner and Bancroft have been – and they will no doubt continue to be plagued in the foreseeable future.
My argument is that had the ICC come down hard on earlier tamperings with suspensions and fines that really hurt, Smith, Warner and Bancroft would be playing in Johannesburg in the current Test.
(Ashley Vlotman/Gallo Images/Getty Images)
The first recorded case of ball tampering was England pace bowler John Lever in India in 1976 using Vaseline to keep the shiny side very shiny. Punishment: zero.
Had Lever been banned for six months for playing anywhere as a full-time professional, it’s a pretty fair bet nobody would have dared to tamper ever again.
Kiwi Chris Pringle was the next in 1990, but he wasn’t punished when he told the ICC the only reason he did it was because he was convinced Pakistan was doing the same.
Michael Atherton very nearly lost the England captaincy in 1994 when he rubbed dirt from his pocket on the ball in a Test against South Africa at Lord’s. He was fined £2000 by the Test and County Cricket Board, not the ICC.
Champion paceman Waqar Younis was next in 2000 for Pakistan against South Africa. He was fined 50 per cent of his match fee and suspended for one ODI. In the same series Moin Khan and Azhar Mehmood were fined 30 per cent of their match fees for tampering.
When the legendary Indian batsman Sachin Tendulkar was caught ball tampering in 2001 against South Africa, the ICC handed down a suspended one-Test ban. What a pathetically weak ‘penalty’ – must not upset the Board of Control for Cricket in India.
(Duif du Toit / Gallo Images/Getty Images)
The fiery Pakistan quick Shoaib Akhtar copped a two-ODI suspension in 2003 against New Zealand after admitting he had ball-tampered many times in the past.
Another Indian batting legend Rahul Dravid was fined 50 per cent of his match fee in 2004 for tampering against Zimbabwe.
In 2005 opening batsman Marcus Trescothick admitted England regularly tampered with the ball by chewing Murray Mints and adding the sticky saliva to the ball. Punishment: zero.
In 2006 the entire Pakistan team was charged with ball tampering and walked off the field in disgust, refusing to play. The umpires awarded the Test to England on a Pakistan forfeit for the only time in history.
In 2010 Stuart Broad deliberately trod on the ball for England against South Africa to rough it up with his spikes. Punishment: zero.
Also in 2010, Shahid Afridi twice deliberately bit the ball to change its condition playing for Pakistan against Australia and was suspended for two ODIs.
In 2013 South African Faf du Plessis was found guilty of roughing up the ball against the zip on his trousers against Pakistan. You won’t believe how pathetic the punishment was from the ICC: South Africa had five runs deducted from their total.
(Image: Channel Nine)
In 2014 South African paceman Vernon Philander pleaded guilty to roughing up the ball with an outside substance against Sri Lanka and was fined 75 per cent of his match fee.
And du Plessis surfaced a second time in 2016 against Australia when he added sticky mint saliva to the ball to be fined 100 per cent of his match fee handed and three demerit points.
Now it’s time for the toothless ICC to put some genuine bite into the ball tamperings of the future to make sure it never happens again.
Cricket Australia has set the benchmark; it’s up to the ICC to make heavy punishment universally official.
Anything less and the ICC desperately needs a clean-out starting from the top.