My heart dropped to the pit of my stomach as I watched the blaring headlines labelling my Australian cricket team as cheats.
My team!! A rush of confusion, followed by disbelief, anger, frustration and disappointment stilled me as I stood gesturing for my two-year-old to hush! This was important news and I needed to listen.
I continued to stare in disbelief as I watched the footage of Cam Bancroft take the yellow paper from his pocket, and Steve Smith be ushered from the field by South African police. Play dramatic horror music in background.
Boys… What have you done?
You are my Australian cricket team. You are my baggy green, my nation’s pride, my Boxing Day tradition, my wheelie bin Australia Day cricket matches, a reflection of my own will, desire and ability to win and to do so with integrity and sportsmanship.
I look to you when I fall. For the perseverance for the commitment, the dedication, the training, and of course when we flog the Poms in the Ashes. You mentor me as you are a part of me, and cricket is a part of us. How could this happen?
Well, the answer is simple. You are human. No single person will ever truly understand what leads any person in any sport to cheat. Is it the desire to win, driven by an overriding need for acceptance?
Is it the inability to speak one’s truth for fear of repercussion or judgement? Is it a battle of banter that becomes primal in nature and shape shifts out of control from on-field sledging to something more sinister and purposeful?
Is it a need for belonging? Or is it just that you need to learn? Or we need to learn? What sort of culture are we fostering within our national teams where the expectation to win, or at least be seen to be achieving, overcomes the true sense of gamesmanship and integrity?
What has become of fair play in sport that even the International Cricket Council only threatens a one Test match ban and a match fee in return for the brazen act of ball tampering. It seems such a disproportionate punishment that it’s almost a challenge.
An offering by the cricket gods to mess with the spirit of the game just to see what happens.
Well, we know what happens in Australia. You get slammed. Did they cheat? Yes. Do I wish they didn’t do it? Yes. Am I disappointed? Hell yes.
But as Australians we are more than just integrity and sportsmanship aren’t we? We are there for our mates, we are the underdog.
We try, we fail, we fall, we get up. We fall again. We break shit and we fix it with a tarp and some gaff. We have a few beers and say something to a mate we wish we could take back.
Sometimes we really mess up and make a bad decision in our work, our family, our marriages. But when we fuck up for most of us, it’s not flashed across the news and papers. Our failure usually dissipates to our partner, our family or work colleagues or maybe some of our friends, not across the entire nation. How we manage failure is where our true heart is.
Failure is opportunity. Its opportunity for our boys to grow and for us to grow as the cricketing nation we know and love.
(AAP Image/Brendan Esposito)
I challenge you, all of you. Reach out to our boys. Yes they did the wrong thing and there should be repercussions for their actions. Repercussions however that will be exemplified by their privileged status.
Not just their fall from grace in the eyes of the Australian media and the Australian public, not just the ban from the sport they love, their personal brand and the damage they have done to the spirit of Australian cricket, but their relationships with their parents, their wives, their sons and daughters, friends, teammates, coaches past and present, and most importantly with themselves.
To Smith, Bancroft, Lehmann, Warner and all of the Australian cricket team, let this make you not break you. Take some time to process and journey inward and learn the lesson that is resting there for each of you.
Be disappointed, be angry, be sad, feel what you need to feel. But then pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get back on the horse.
To all of you reading this. Be the CEO of the young cricket club that reaches out to these men. There are more lessons to be learned here than how to rough up a cricket ball or make a Test hundred.
Be the principal of the primary school that asks one of these young men to come and address their students. Be the person that walks past them on the street and says “It will be okay Mate” because it will. Because we are Australian and we are real.
We don’t abandon our mates. We take the good with the bad. We fall down six times and we get up seven. We learn from failure and we rally as a nation. But we sure as hell don’t tolerate cheating. So next time don’t fucking do it!
Let’s show some support for our boys and encourage some healthy discussion on cheating at #aussiecricketindarknessandlight
With thanks and gratitude.
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