Baggy Green ball tampering: Bancroft, Smith and the Aussie "Leadership Group"

[GotSpin]

The one good thing to come out this sacking will be the removal of Lehmann.

His results have been poor and the cultivation of team culture has been horrible. What a ****

 

[Kirkut]

This is actually kind of annoying because it implies that no one else tries to do it. That's just wrong. Australia took it a step to far this time and their actions were stupid in both their hypocrisy and execution. But lets not pretend teams havent been doing it for years. The reaction from former players is just ****ed. What kind of short term memory do they have?

Ball tampering should be legal (to an extent) anyway

Also chucking.

Bring back the doosra!

 

[Victor Ian]

Why is everyone so keen to blame their hate on people because they're ****s. Your guys are ****s too, but you just look the other way because they are your ****s. Mostly, they are all ****s. If Lehman was your **** you'd be over the moon to have such a ****. I'm not much a fan of his, but it is not because I think he is a ****.

 

[MagicPoopShovel]

Lolz
https://twitter.com/HoeZaay/status/978313472214577153

 

[Kirkut]

Cricket and a Cuppa: Ball Tampering Explodes

You can add Kohli to that list too. Nearly got caught against England with that sweet in his mouth at Vizag test I guess.

 

[sunilz]

I love the fact that CA looks like coming down harder on its players than the fame’s Governing body any other country is somehow another reason that they aren’t upholding an ideal of sportsmanship.

CA has to come down harder because all the evidence are against their players and Smith has accepted the charges against him.

Had CA taken action against Smith last year during DRS controversy they wouldn't have seen this day.

By not taking action against smith last year CA made him feel that he could get away with anything.

I doubt CA would have taken any action had smith not accepted his crime. They would have buried this incident like waugh-warne incident.

 

[OverratedSanity]

Also find the online reaction to the news that Smith may be banned for a year to be a bit hypocritical. We're only a couple of weeks removed from everyone saying that Rabada being banned for 1 test would be bad for the game of cricket. And now when it comes out that two of the best batsmen in the world may be gone for a year, you have loads of people reacting with glee. I'm not pretending that both those things are the same but it's still interesting.

Goes to show I guess that real cricket fans know fast bowlers are the master race and the batsmen are boring and replaceable.

 

[Spark]

This is actually kind of annoying because it implies that no one else tries to do it. That's just wrong. Australia took it a step to far this time and their actions were stupid in both their hypocrisy and execution. But lets not pretend teams havent been doing it for years. The reaction from former players is just ****ed. What kind of short term memory do they have?

Ball tampering should be legal (to an extent) anyway

There's an element of "he doth protest too much" to these

 

[Starfighter]

Also find the online reaction to the news that Smith may be banned for a year to be a bit hypocritical. We're only a couple of weeks removed from everyone saying that Rabada being banned for 1 test would be bad for the game of cricket. And now when it comes out that two of the best batsmen in the world may be gone for a year, you have loads of people reacting with glee. I'm not pretending that both those things are the same but it's still interesting.

Goes to show I guess that real cricket fans know fast bowlers are the master race and the batsmen are boring and replaceable.

I think it's much more to with who each is and where they are from. I don't think there would have been the amount of whinging had, say, Starc been banned for a test.

The last line is true though.

 

[GotSpin]

There's an element of "he doth protest too much" to these

waddya mean

 

[Spark]

waddya mean

As in they're reacting so harshly because they want to protect their own reputations, which makes you wonder why they'd be bothered about protecting their own reputations at a time like this

 

[GotSpin]

As in they're reacting so harshly because they want to protect their own reputations, which makes you wonder why they'd be bothered about protecting their own reputations at a time like this

Oh right. Wasn't sure which part of my post you were referring to at first.

 

[Spark]

Oh right. Wasn't sure which part of my post you were referring to at first.

Yeah I probably should have quoted the same post you quoted

 

[TheJediBrah]

It sticks out to me as well that it's mostly former players that are condemning it and not so much current players. Current players generally being all to aware that they all do the same **** and condemning it now sets them up to look like fools down the line if someone digs back into their history, or follows them more closely in the future.

 

[Borges]

> I don't think there would have been the amount of whinging had, say, Starc been banned for a test.

My guess is that there would have been a fair amount of sympathy for Starc too, if it was known that the opposing team had hatched a plan to try and provoke him into doing something that would result in a ban.

 

[The Hutt Rec]

Any serious attempt to curtail throwing the ball into the ground to scuff it up is just stupid and pointless. What are you going to do, ban all bounce throws? Fine a player if they can't make the distance or accidentally bounces the ball before the keeper?

Or just keep doing what some umpires do now and randomly decide "ok you've thrown the ball into ground a bit now that's enough"

That’s not really the main point of the articles, as far as what I was referring to, anyway.

Given that Australian seamers have themselves battled to master the curious art over many years, particularly in sub-continental conditions where it is most prized, that surprise was partly generated by the ability of Mitchell Marsh, Jackson Bird and Josh Hazlewood to find ‘reverse’.

But just as perplexing for the Black Caps was how the visiting team was able to get the old ball to deviate from the straight when their own pace attack, so much more familiar with local conditions and idiosyncrasies, could barely bring about a wobble throughout Australia’s innings of 562

...

“We got lucky, someone hit a cut shot and it really scuffed up one side of the ball," Australia skipper Steve Smith said.

"So that really got it started for us."

 

[GotSpin]

I do admire that CA and the fans are actually trying to preserve this idea of 'Australian Sportsmanship' by handing out severe punishments when presented with strong evidence of actions against it.

But personally. I think it's a dumb ideal to begin with. This is Elite Sport. The players are going to push the rules. It's natural. To have this standard that the players are supposed to uphold whilst they are also supposed to, simultaneously, be doing everything they can to win creates all this grey area of what is acceptable conduct and what isn't. It's trying to balance two conflicting ideals. You cannot be doing everything you can to win unless you are also bending the rules. You want your elite sportsmen to not walk, to sneakily tamper the ball, to take every little advantage they can get. You want to see that hunger in them to win. You cannot be a Steve Waugh and also be a goody goody two shoes. It just doesn't work.

In trying to balance these two conflicting ideals, they end up making hypocrites of themselves. And that's what I don't like. I don't mind nasty. I mind hypocrisy.

To me, the ideal way to deal with this situation would be abandoning the myth of "Australian Sportsmanship" altogether. Shatter whatever image and perceptions you have created, and just own the identity of being a nasty cricket team who will take whatever advantage they can get and is willing to play dirty to win. Like, realistically I don't know how they can do this - with all the brand image that has been created, and the code of conduct, and the sponsors, and all that stuff. Realistically they have backed themselves into a corner where they have to do what they are doing now, and double down on this Myth and now work to make it a reality.

This isn't the problem of other cricket nations. No other nation has attempted to cultivate this myth. Maybe England, but that's it. The subcontinent is fine playing nasty cricket, and if anything we seem to increasingly be encouraging it. SA have always been gracious off the field and ruthless on it. Kiwis are just naturally nice, they aren't falsifying it. The West Indians mankaded their way to a U-19 WC win not so long ago, invented their own dances to celebrate wickets, and since the 70s have been an aggressive and intimidating bunch. None of them have tried to foster this double-identity. None of them have this mantra of 'Hard but Fair'. It's just Australia. And so I don't think we should look to other countries to follow Australia's lead on how to deal with cheats.

Australia backed themselves into this corner, they can get themselves out of it.

It's not the hypocrisy as such that has gotten everyone all rilled up here (in Australia) IMO

The real problem was Steve saying it was a group conspiracy. His explanation made it sound like the whole team got together around the lunch room table and made plans on how to best cheat.

If he'd come out and said 'oh yeah, Cameron and I went a bit rogue in our decision making. It was a spur of the moment decision and we obviously took it to far' - This whole debacle would have been treated so differently as it rightly should be.

 

[The Hutt Rec]

This is actually kind of annoying because it implies that no one else tries to do it. That's just wrong. Australia took it a step to far this time and their actions were stupid in both their hypocrisy and execution. But lets not pretend teams havent been doing it for years. The reaction from former players is just ****ed. What kind of short term memory do they have?<br>
<br>
Ball tampering should be legal (to an extent) anyway

Well if one side was getting massive reverse throughout the series and the other side was getting nothing (and copping a fair share of criticism for not being able to at the time, as well), then it certainly implies to me that one side was not doing it and one side was (given what we know now).

 

[GotSpin]

That’s not really the main point of the articles, as far as what I was referring to, anyway.

Yeah because the kiwis are a bunch of gentle simple minded players who constantly punch above their weight. Spare me

 

[GotSpin]

<br>
<br>Well if one side was getting massive reverse throughout the series and the other side was getting nothing (and copping a fair share of criticism for not being able to at the time, as well), then it certainly implies to me that one side was not doing it and one side was.

Then that side who didn't do anything is ****ing stupid