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The last few days have been quite hectic for cricket fans in Pakistan. What to focus on? For a choice, what about the characteristic Kamran Akmal moment in the PSL final? Boy, that alone remained a serious — and hilarious — contender for mass attention!
But for cricket followers — as against the followers of Pakistan cricket — the eyes remained glued to the bitterness as it unfolded day by day and, at times, hour by hour, in South Africa where the visiting Australians were caught red handed while tampering with the ball. The episode and its fallout have had much more impact on the game than anything else happening anywhere else.
As has been often described in global media, the Aussies were caught with their hands in the cookie jar. But the manner in which it all happened, a more apt description would have them caught with their pants down as Cameron Bancroft was snapped on the camera sliding ‘something yellow’ down the front of his trousers with the waist-strings loosened enough to let his hand do the manoeuvre.
Afridi’s 2010 biting-the-ball image was bad enough for the game, but Bancroft’s lunacy in Cape Town still takes the cake, hands down. With Cricket Australia’s history of covering up, it would be naive to assume the world knows everything worth knowing
In fact, so embarrassingly obvious was the episode that it is not too much of an exaggeration to say that the Australians were caught with their hands in the cookie jar and with their pants down. Just spend an extra moment to conceive that imagery and you would know how bad it was. Shahid Afridi’s biting-the-ball image was bad enough, but Bancroft’s lunacy would take the cake anytime.
What was even worse was the lame attempt to grab the moral high ground by the smug Aussies. The player started off with a white lie to the on-field umpires. He was supported in the act by his captain, Steve Smith, with vice-captain David Warner in close proximity. Then came the apology when camera footage left no chance for anyone to wriggle out of that tight spot. Even when supposedly trying to appear contrite and repentant in public, Smith talked of ‘the leadership group’ having knowledge of the attempted cheating. He was lying.
The yellow sticky tape story was narrated in full by Bancroft to media in his apology, but subsequently it turned out to be sandpaper. He was lying too. But a bigger question should be about the presence of the sandpaper in the Australian dressing room. What was it doing there? Have they been cheating for some time? Maybe a long time?
The pace at which Cricket Australia (CA) moved to handle the affair, flying people in and out of a country that is almost a full day’s flight away, and arriving at reasonably tough decisions rather quickly, was professionalism at its best. At least apparently. But is there a good enough reason to believe that all this efficiency is not about diverting the spotlight away from something even more horrid? Does CA know anything more that the public doesn’t? It has a history of doing that, remember?
Mark Waugh and Shane Warne, two leading lights who were part of the modern-day Invincibles, had their own brush with the bookies back in September, 1994. They were picked up, confessed to wrongdoing and were penalised with fines in February 1995 by the Australian Cricket Board (ACB), as the CA was known at the time. But it was all an internal affair kept under wraps with watertight confidentiality. It was only when respected Australian journalist Malcolm Conn got a hint of it that the ACB was forced to go public in December 1998. The Australian authorities knew of it for a good four years — four years during which these very Australians were presenting testimony against Salim Malik on similar charges. That is one big WOW for self-righteousness. The ACB went public only — repeat only — when there was no other way left to it. Some excerpts from Conn would do here:
“A couple of weeks and two Tests later I met then ACB chief executive Malcolm Speed with a list of questions. He said ‘No comment’ to every one. I rang Mark Waugh. He denied it then added: ‘Who told you?’ More phone calls and I had enough to write. I rang Speed and told him I was going to publish. He told me to wait.
“An hour or two later he rang, explaining that not only had Mark Waugh been fined 8,000 in Australian dollars ... but Shane Warne had been fined $10,000 for the same offence. I was gobsmacked. Warne too!
“The fines had been imposed in a small airport room before the team flew out to the West Indies in 1995 by then ACB chairman Alan Crompton and chief executive Graham Halbish, who later announced the decision to a board meeting and instituted a cover-up.
“All hell broke loose when the story broke. Waugh and Warne ... read prepared statements at a press conference, saying they had been naive and stupid. They did not answer questions.”
It is not too hard to see CA covering up and letting go only when it had to. It may well be happening again. The three players have expressed their guilt only when they had to, and their interaction with media has led to more questions rather than fewer because they avoided questions blatantly.
Bancroft was asked if it was unusual to take sandpaper out on to the field. His answer: “Look, I am not here to comment about that ... it’s embarrassing, and I’m truly sorry.”
Warner was pressed time and again but remained evasive ... almost self-incriminatingly evasive. Here are excerpts:
“Can you, hand on your heart, say no other players or coaches knew about your plot?”
“I am here today to accept my responsibility for my part, my involvement for what happened in Cape Town. It’s inexcusable. I’m deeply sorry. As I said, I’ll do everything I can to earn that respect back from the Australian public.”
“Did you orchestrate this scandal? Was it your idea?”
“As I said, I am here to take full responsibility for the part that I played in this. It’s extremely regrettable, I’m very sorry.”
“Can you, hand on heart, say you have never done this before?”
“As I said before, I’m here to accept my responsibility for my part that I played on day three [of] Cape Town Test.”
“Do you feel you’re being made a scapegoat? You’re holding back with some of your answers.”
“As I said before, I am here to speak about myself, and take responsibility for the part I played in this. Thank you.”
It would be naive to assume that the world already knows what is there to be known of the scandal. They may have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar and with their pants down, but the words and actions of these sanctimonious scoundrels — both among the players and within CA — have enough to keep everyone interested.
Published in Dawn, EOS, April 8th, 2018
