On March 24, Steve Smith seemed irredeemable. As he admitted to his involvement in the ball-tampering incident, hell broke loose. Roars of disapproval were released and perspective imprisoned by outrage. It was not enough that the International Cricket Council (ICC) gave its maximum punishment for ball-tampering, in accordance with its Code of Conduct, to the captain and his teammates. Collective bloodlust had to be satisfied. An example was sought to be made out of Smith, vice-captain David Warner and Cameron Bancroft.
By the time the sacked skipper and the young upstart fielded questions from the press, much had changed. Cricket Australia, in its characteristically bungling fashion, had intervened in the matter. The long bans, though, were not going to be enough. For some reason, it was considered necessary that Smith and Bancroft hold a press conference after days of vilification and name-calling.
The players had to be seen as genuinely remorseful. Cricketers, who only hours ago were deemed to be guilty of the worst ‘crimes’, now had to be paraded in public. Their guilt had to be washed in front of the world, their tears to be savoured by those who had been guilty of the same error in the past. No rehabilitation could be complete without a morality play.
Taking cricket forward
Some of the shame felt by Australians and Australian cricket is real. As Brydon Coverdale argued, the men’s national cricket side preceded the formation of Australia as a nation-state. One cannot overlook the weight of history.
But the burden of the present deserves our time too. CA’s disproportionate sanctions on the cricketers have rubbed many the wrong way. They are not only without precedent, rather they seem to reveal a self-serving agenda behind CA’s actions. The administrators seem to be on a mission to prove that they are worthy custodians of Australian cricket, with the guilty players relegated to the role of errant employees who have caused harm to the game and business of cricket.
A closer look at this claim, however, exposes its weak footing. CA’s actions in recent years have uncovered an ethical and strategic vacuity in its operations. It was CA, after all, that championed the ‘Big 3’ takeover in 2014 that led to the board benefitting financially from the administrative overhaul while the remote control of international cricket was firmly placed in the BCCI’s hands.
CA has also been a supporter of the decision to trim the 50-over World Cup to 10 countries at a time when every other sport is opening the doors of its showpiece event to more nations. The 2019 tournament in England will revert to the format used in 1992. Talk about taking cricket forward.
And then there is CA’s record in the pay dispute with Australian cricketers last year. Forced to concede ground to the united players, the governing body had made its displeasure known over their tactics. David Warner was among the more outspoken members of the Australian Cricketers’ Association during that period. While his transgressions on and off the field are considerable, was his public disagreement with CA last year also behind reports that said the governing body was fed up of the batsman?
Perhaps so. It is baffling that in a sport where ball-tampering remains a confusing and minor offence –Smith is the first player to miss a Test match because of it – CA chose to hand its players an unprecedented sentence. The heavy sanctions, as CEO James Sutherland explained, were for the damage caused to the game.
It is worth asking to what degree is cricket damaged by an inept attempt at altering the ball’s condition. A tampered ball rightfully remains an infringement because it does not amount to manipulation of the result and corruption of the players involved. Cheating or breaking of the rules is an inherent part of any sport. If there was no possibility of that, would umpires or referees even exist?
Holier than thou
Ethical or financial corruption, however, is a more serious offence. Fixing and doping belong to this category. The former Australian spinner Shane Warne was given a 12-month ban for the latter in 2003, just like Smith and Warner. In light of the ongoing scandal, it becomes important to state that ball-tampering merely hampers the conduct of a match (as the ball may need to be changed) while giving one team an advantage that till date remains questionable. Doping or fixing, on the other hand, is an attempt to manipulate the result while putting into question the integrity of those involved.
If the CA’s standard had been implemented in football, anybody who commits a foul would be in danger of a long ban. Imagine the consequences.
But the CA’s real culpability arises from its description of the suspended cricketers as a “few rotten apples” in a sport that is relatively clean. Cricket’s marketability is its overarching concern. No wonder the harsh sanctions have come at a time when CA is renegotiating a new television rights deal. Top dollar may be hard to attract now.
The response from its commercial partners to the scandal has also left CA quaking in its boots. In the aftermath of ball-tampering, the corporate influencers have plumped for the ‘holier than thou’ approach. But a closer look at their own record will reveal truths that define ethical and financial corruption.
CA’s nine-member ‘independent’ board is chaired by David Peever, former managing director of global mining giant Rio Tinto, who targeted unionised miners by offering them a lower severance package when operations at a mine in Queensland were closed in 2012. Another board member, Jacqui Hey, enjoys a similar position at Qantas, the airline found to be the aviation industry’s biggest contributor to carbon dioxide emissions in the Pacific this January by the International Council on Clean Transportation. Qantas also took the extreme measure of locking out its striking employees in 2011. The man responsible for that decision was chief executive Alan Joyce, who was quick to demand this week that CA do “the right thing”.
And then, there is Bob Every, in whose time as chairman at Wesfarmers, before he joined the CA board, truck drivers were forced to break speed and weight limits for meeting delivery requirements.
What really happened?
The CA’s commercial partners have skeletons in the closet too. LG, which only now disapproved of Warner’s conduct, has a long history of price-fixing and consumer fraud. Sanitarium, which no longer wants to be associated with Steve Smith, has attracted controversy for its overseas business investments while functioning as a charity group thanks to its ownership by Seventh-Day Adventist Church.
Commonwealth Bank does not approve of Smith anymore either, but what is one supposed to make of it selling junk insurance to students, pensioners and the unemployed? Or the prosecution it faces for 53,700 breaches of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism laws?
There’s more. Bupa has earned the wrath of public and doctors twice this year already for cutting coverage for multiple health procedures to its insured members and demanding that patients are sent to only those hospitals that it approves. Accenture has been found to “demonstrate an absence of business ethics” in the past, while KFC has been guilty of racist advertising in its promotion of cricket. Ethical and financial corruption, anyone?
If CA had kept its perspective while everyone else lost their heads – as good leadership group must act – it could have succeeded in tiding over the storm. But now, it faces questions over its actions on the matter. Can we be sure that the CA’s version which implicated only three players is the truthful, reliable version of events? Coach Darren Lehmann (who has resigned now) and the bowlers are in the clear because the people who lied about sandpaper said so. Why were they assumed to be reliable inside a room when their account of events kept changing?
Perhaps the truth perhaps is too uncomfortable. As Michael Holding suggested in an interview to Mumbai Mirror, “I think, that they want to give the world an impression that not many people were involved in this. They wanted to control the damage. Obviously, the lesser people involved in this episode, the better. So they stuck with the captain, vice-captain and Bancroft who no one could argue were not involved.”
Lehmann’s resignation on Thursday suggested that he is considered to be in some way culpable for the ball-tampering incident by CA but guess in a scenario when the official version is riddled with doubts. There remains much that is unanswered but Australian cricket seems to have resigned itself to the best-case scenario in light of all that has gone wrong.
However, this may not be the end of it. When the fire dies down, the players may consider calling out CA on its badly-conducted procedure. The Australian Cricketers’ Association has already voiced its concerns and it may counsel players to seek the legal route. There is little love lost between CA and the association; during the pay dispute, the former pejoratively compared the latter to “an old-style union”.
Inquiry must not stop with players
If the suspended players were to approach the Court of Arbitration for Sport, CA may find it difficult to justify the severity of its sanctions. Since the cricketers in question have been handed punishments that were nowhere close to the ICC’s decision and are not guilty of committing an unprecedented act either, the governing body’s best hope is that players prioritise self-preservation in a tough time and accept the punishment. But if a legal challenge is forthcoming, then even the Indian premier League would have to be worried. Its alacrity in banning Smith and Warner was a move in haste. If only the franchise league could respond to its own problems with the same eagerness…
In light of past incidents of ball-tampering, it is tempting to consider whether Smith and his teammates could have avoided the scrutiny and moralising if they had not owned up to their mistake. Players from other sides often publicly deny the charge and move on. Australian society, though, likes to hold its sportspersons on a pedestal that they share with nobody else. This is why Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, a gleeful proponent of stricter visa regimes so that ‘Australian interests’ are put first, enjoys lesser accountability than the Australian captain. Letting the country down, that most parochial of obsessions in a cricket lover’s mind, is more likely to be associated with Smith than Turnbull.
But more than anyone else, it is CA that has let Australian cricket down. Through its high-handed approach, it has sought public approval and corporate support to the detriment of the men’s cricketing team. No sponsor, even considering the support of AUD 20 million in three years, is worth punishing your best players. The Australian team does deserve to have its culture scrutinised, but the inquiry must not stop with the players. It is Sutherland and his team who pose a more serious threat to Australian cricket.
Priyansh is a freelance sports writer based in Delhi.