The Australian self-image is one of manly combativeness, in which all is fair. To them, the spirit of the game is for wussy lesser men.
Australia was caught cheating in a Test match in South Africa on 24 March 2018, and world cricket may change forever as a result. Players may now have to be frisked before they take the field in a cricket match, so that umpires can be sure they have no sticky tape (or sandpaper) with which to alter the condition of the match ball.
I jest, but only just.
The Australian captain Stephen Smith, who was plausibly accused of being a cheat in India last year by Virat Kohli, has confessed in Cape Town to devising a method by which his team would scuff up the ball surreptitiously to help it reverse-swing. It was a crude plan, cooked up, Smith said, by the “leadership group” of the Australian team. The execution of this moronic moral lapse was entrusted to a man, Cameron Bancroft, playing in only his eighth Test match. In keeping with the present picayune moral standards of Australian cricket, young Bancroft appears to have been made the scapegoat of the affair. The pathetic Bancroft has pleaded guilty to the offence of altering the condition of the cricket ball, and faces a ban of a match or two — at least. (I would hope the ban is greater, but I shall return to that point later.)
As of this writing, it is not clear what punishment Smith will face, or what offence he will be charged with. He is the captain of the team, and, therefore, Bancroft’s undisputed boss. Bancroft acted on Smith’s orders. Smith confessed to the cheating at a sordid little press conference at the end of play Saturday, but he refused to resign. “No, I won’t be considering stepping down. I still think I’m the right person for the job,” he said, clearly believing that fitness for captaincy of a national cricket team is a matter of sporting ability alone.
“Hopefully, we’ll learn something from it,” Smith went on, in reference to the tampering caught so nakedly on film, and followed that up with a concession that he and “the boys in the shed” were “embarrassed”. Being the leader of the team, he continued, “I’m incredibly sorry for trying to bring the game into disrepute the way we did today.” This was all so mealy-mouthed as to be positively un-Australian.
Or maybe not. The Australian self-image is one of manly combativeness, in which all is fair —even if it’s mighty ugly — as long as it’s within the frame of the rules. What matters to them is the letter of the law, not its spirit. The spirit of the game is for wussy lesser men. And it’s often been the case that Australian cricketers, products of a social culture that prizes finely honed insults, have unhinged opponents from cultures where sport and insult seldom mix, or where crude “banter” is simply not an acceptable part of apparently non-violent interaction.
But scuffing the ball isn’t manly. Sending a substitute onto the field to tell your cheating player he’s on camera and had, therefore, better hide the evidence isn’t manly. Stuffing sticky yellow tape down your jock-strap isn’t manly. And showing the umpire a misleading black handkerchief when he asks to see what’s in your pocket isn’t manly. (It’s deception. Advance Australia Unfair!)
What should happen next? The cricket world — a funny old universe, usually at odds with itself — is united in its condemnation of Australia’s behaviour. Alan Border and Shane Warne, former Aussie greats now part of the commentary team at the Test match, both expressed their revulsion.
To say that Smith cannot continue as Australia’s captain is to state the barest minimum of consequence. He must be banned from the game for a period that sends out a clear message to all cricketers that cheating will not be tolerated.
Remember poor Mohammad Amir, the Pakistani fast bowler? Barely 18, callow as they come, unversed in the English language and in the ways of the wicked world, he followed his captain’s instructions and bowled deliberate no-balls in a Test at Lord’s. He was banned, pitilessly, for five years. How was his offense graver than Steve Smith’s? Smith orchestrated cheating in a manner that sought to subvert the outcome of a Test match. By his confession — though I refuse to accept that the coach, Darren Lehmann, was not involved — the team’s “leadership group” of players hatched a plan to get South African batsmen out illegally. Let Smith be banned for at least as long as Mohammad Amir was: Five years is just and fair, commensurate with the magnitude of the offence. Smith will be 33 when the ban ends, which will give him a few more years of cricket (though never again the captaincy of Australia).
The “leadership group”, which we are given to understand comprises David Warner, Nathan Lyon, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood, should be banned, too — and two years each sounds about right. Cameron Bancroft should be added to that two-year list, since I-was-just-following-orders has no great pedigree in the philosophy of punishment. Let the bans take effect quickly. None of these players should play in the fourth Test at Johannesburg that starts on 30 March. Let me be clear: Australia should have to take the field there, without Smith, Warner, Starc, Hazlewood, Lyon and Bancroft. They’ll have to fly in six replacements. If you tamper with the ball, we will tamper with your team.
Which brings us to Darren Lehmann. Smith seems to have gone to great lengths to exclude the coach from the sphere of culpability. I guess there’s some more misguided Aussie manliness at play here. (Aww, look mate, it was just us blokes, you know. Boof wasn’t in on it.) Let there be a proper judicial enquiry into Lehmann’s role. He was no choirboy as a player — he called Sri Lanka’s players “black c***s” in 2003 after a run-out incident in a One-Day International in Australia — and some of the footage surrounding the cheating at Cape Town suggests that he was thoroughly in the know. In the modern era, no captain so much as picks his nose without consulting the coach. Question Lehmann under oath. And if he’s guilty, ban him from coaching for five years.
A footnote: Virat Kohli, India’s captain, seems to have modeled himself on the Australians in terms of his hardness and his refusal to concede an inch to an opponent. As he watches Steve Smith head for a prolonged ban, he may wish, also, to consider the shortcomings of the Australian Way.
Tunku Varadarajan is the Virginia Hobbs Carpenter Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.