Just hope all those yellow cards don’t come back to bit them.

Maybe, but from what I watched of the game (didn’t catch it all) there were plenty of times there were Aussies writhing around on the ground too!

There were certainly two occasions in the second half where they really should have scored but fluffed it. That killer instinct in front of goal has so often been one thing really lacking for Australia. So often when an opening comes up there’s just one or two extra touches trying to control it before taking the shot that allows the defense to close them down. Which was actually one of the impressive things about the second goal, first touch shoot and score. I think Aussie teams need more of that. Don’t second guess yourself, don’t take the extra touch to control, just take the shot before the defense has a chance to close you down.

Fawad’s case was a bit of a joke, definitely. with CA pushing for his application to be fast tracked so he could play for Australia and then he barely ever does, was a bit of a joke.

But as a more general rule, refugee sportspeople representing their adopted country I think is totally good. If they really had to leave their home country out of fear for their life, then they can’t exactly represent them. So that’s a case where I think it’s totally legit to move to representing your new country.

In Fawad’s case it was really CA and the Australian government jumping through hoops to get him fast tracked simply because he could bowl legspin that’s the issue, can’t blame Fawad himself for that.

Yes, I’ve always found that sportspeople who simply came to Australia as an adult for better opportunities in their sport are always harder to cheer for as an Australian, but people who came here for completely non-sporting reasons, like they moved here as a kid and their sporting development was done here, they are as Australian as anyone as far as I’m concerned. So with respect of other countries, the likes of Archer, Wagner, Conway, Pietersen rub me a bit wrong, but no issue with the likes of Stokes, Wattling, Khawaja, Labushagne.

If the ECB played this right, he could be used as a positive example, how he has grown, and matured and come to realise that those sorts of things were completely wrong and unacceptible, and how he wishes he’s understood that when he was in his teens, rather than having to go through all the education to learn how wrong such things were.

But instead they’ll likely suspend him and try to make some example of him in a way that doesn’t actually help anyone.

I get that he may have tweeted horrible things. But seriously, they were just tweets done years ago as an 18-19 year old. Ben Stokes beat the crap out of some people and they welcomed him straight back into the team the moment he got away with it with lots of talk about how he’s changed and matured. This is one of the issues with modern social media. So many players over the years probably said things like this, and worse, when they were young, before maturing and realising that such things were completely wrong and horrible, but they weren’t on some computer somewhere for people to dig up years later and hold against them.

If he wasn’t upset with that shocker of a decision there’s something wrong. That hit him a mile outside off stump and would have missed a fourth stump. Absolute shocker. And even harder when you have had a few low scores and just need to get that innings to get you going, then get poor decisions like this. Probably even harder when you play international cricket and know that if the same happened to you there you could challenge and have the decision overturned, but here you can’t.

I suppose my biggest worry with cracking down on ball tampering is if they are playing tests with balls that won’t swing unless you cross the line in your handling of the balls, then you crack down on that handling, it just leads to more boring cricket. So take away the “need” for ball tampering by giving them balls that will actually give the bowlers something more to work with.

Definitely. Time to move on.

Unless they want to just do a general, recrimination free, worldwide investigation into ball tampering to try and understand it with a view to working out a better way forward over all, then lets just move on.

Personally, I just think they need to find a way to provide the bowlers with balls that will move around a bit more so that the options aren’t 50 overs of attritional cricket, just trying to keep the runs down and hope for a mistake while we wait for the new ball to become available, or some sort of “over the line” attempts at changing the condition of the ball to get it to start swinging.

Give them a ball that doesn’t need to be tampered with to get swing and there will be less tampering.

Yeah, agree with that. If people think you are guilty, there’s no sort of statement you can really make to convince them otherwise.

I don’t know about refreshingly honest. It was a throwaway line that paints with a broad brush stroke that didn’t really say anything useful.

Refreshingly honest would be something like: “Yeah, we had team meetings where everyone was involved and things to talk about how to get batsmen out, and those discussions included how we needed to find a way to get one side of the ball to rough up more so we could get reverse swing. They then tasked Warner and myself with working out some specifics of how we could go about that. So the others didn’t specifically know I brought sandpaper onto the field, but they knew we were trying to find some way to rough up the ball”.

Not, “well it benefits the bowlers, so I think that’s a bit self-explanatory”. That’s a comment from someone who’s just shown ever since this happened that he really should just avoid ever saying anything in public, because whenever he does he just puts his foot in his mouth.

James, I don’t think anybody has said that. If everyone is breaking the rules, then no, it doesn’t make one instance of someone breaking the rules okay. But it certainly brings some context to it. And the CA reaction and related punishments were ridiculously severe considering ball tampering was so prevalent and nobody had ever got more than a 1-2 match suspension for it in the history of the game.

But my main point is, this was 3 years ago, really it’s just time to move on. IF some investigation is needed, it needs to be more related to the whole issue of ball tampering and understand all that really goes on, not to levy out punishments, but more to work out the best way forward for the game.

If the only way for most teams to get old balls to do anything is to tamper with them, do we need to have a look at the balls being produced, maybe giving them more prominent seams, or making them in such a way that they will deteriorate slightly faster, thus allowing players to work on the ball in ways to get movement, or how to produce pitches and conditions that will allow some ball movement so that tests don’t all just reduce to tepid affairs where the only option the fielding team has is to set defensive fields and try and tie down the batsmen and hope that frustrates them into a mistake, because it’s impossible to get the ball to move off the straight.

Basically, the point being, that if every team basically feels the need to resort to some level of ball tampering to try and get the old ball to do something, maybe that’s what should be addressed, rather than just cracking down on ball tampering.

Can’t be perjury. These aren’t legal proceedings. Just internal investigations between employers and employees. Lying to the CA investigator is wrong, and if found out they could use that as grounds for cancelling contracts and things. But it’s not perjury. That’s only in actual legal proceedings, like lying while giving testimony in court, or in a sworn statutary declaration or the like.

Nothing is going to happen. Even if other stuff came up, they aren’t, nor should they, decide to start applying other sanctions at this point.

He basically played one phenomenal ODI innings and that’s it. Really doesn’t have much else outside that. In 7 T20 international innings he has a high score of 22 and a strike rate of 100. Obviously he’s only had limited chances, but so far he hasn’t been able to show anything beyond that one innings to suggest it wasn’t just a rare fluke rather than a show of quality.

The fact he doesn’t bowl anymore also works against him. More often than not that lower-middle order power hitter role is held by someone who can also contribute with the ball. When he was younger he was considered very much an allrounder, but, largely through injuries I believe, basically stopped bowling. Both Marsh and Stoinis can contribute with the ball as well, which helps with team balance. Turner has to be significantly better than them with the bat to get the chance, because they lose a bowling option if he replaces one of them.

Mind you, at the same time I don’t actually believe they really need 8 bowling options in a team. Definitely good to have a genuine 6th option, but if you have 3 allrounders in the team I don’t see that you need to also have 5 specialist bowlers.

Basically what Broad is meaning to say is, “when we do ball tampering, the whole team is in on it, and I imagine that’s the same with every other team”.

You know what it comes down to. He’s a batsman, he wants to make sure no bowlers are able to get reverse swing ever again!
In the end, every team, is looking to bend the rules around ball handling as much as possible, because they get given these balls that barely swing or seam in any way, so getting reverse swing is the only way to bring some sort of balance into the game. If cracking down harder on ball tampering means that reverse swing has largely disappeared from international cricket except on really abrasive pitches, then in the end that’s not a good thing. When bowlers get the ball reversing it’s a great thing to see. Without reverse swing we often get a scenario where you have 50 overs of just trying to keep the score in check until they can take the second new ball and finally get some movement again.

So if further investigations are needed, maybe it should be an international, recrimination free investigation into what lengths teams have found themselves needing to go to in order to get the ball to move, and then look at changing balls or rules to find a way to get more swing and seam back into the game.

Definitely, although I am pretty sure there was one notorious press conference after Faf was caught with the whole mint thing where Warner talked about the line directly with respect to ball tampering. So that specific one came back to bite big time.

Yeah, he was struggling from the very start of the summer, was never right, and the selectors just kept picking him hoping for him to come right. I get why, he’s the sort of bowler you definitely want in your side when he’s at his best. I really hope he uses this off season to work with some bowling coaches and genuinely work out his technical issues so he can get his rhythm and release right again.

Every single team tries to come up with ways to push the limits of what you can do with the ball to get it to swing more. I’m sure there aren’t many players who haven’t just been a bit extra liberal in the application of sunscreen so that when wiping some sweat on the ball to shine it they might get a bit of extra sunscreen in that. Technically that’s probably ball tampering. But people are always doing things like that. With the balls they give these players that barely swing or seam, it’s no surprise they need to push the limits more and more to get them to do something. Give them better balls and they won’t need to resort to tampering!

In fact, if anything, cracking down on ball tampering, thus reducing the ability for bowlers to get the ball to swing, is probably more of a threat to the game than ball tampering itself. Maybe if they are going to continually provide balls that barely swing or seam, then players need to be given more powers to work on the ball to get it to move and give the bowlers something more to work with. Instead, with COVID, they’ve made it even harder by reducing the ability to even shine the ball at all.

It’s not being honest, it’s throwing out some vague thing to try and deflect from himself at a time when he should just be saying “that’s in the past, can we just move on”.

As for who would “know”. Certainly everyone in the team would know who the ones were who were working on the ball. They would all know that, like every other team, they are trying everything to push the rules to the limit, and maybe a bit beyond, to try and get the ball to swing more. Doesn’t mean they knew the specifics of Bancroft bringing sandpaper onto the field to try and scuff up the ball. Doesn’t mean they didn’t know all about it, but certainly doesn’t mean they did.

Yeah, sounds good. So all the batsmen need to do to get some more gaps in the field is to just slow down play a bit, not being ready when the bowlers at the top of their mark, adjusting their equipment, having more mid-pitch conversations and things, then suddenly they get to face a couple less fielders.

Exactly. I said something reasonably similar further up. When you come out and talk about how your team knows where the line is and just wouldn’t cross it when the opposition gets caught ball tampering, then there’s going to be less sympathy if you are caught ball tampering. CA wanted to be able to maintain some sort of moral high ground, and the only way they knew to do that was to give their own players really harsh penalties that no other country would do to their players.