The Australian teams I played for would have questioned Smith's call
One of the most alarming aspects of the ball-tampering controversy that has placed Australian skipper Steve Smith under pressure is this: why did no one in his team’s leadership group take a stand and suggest what had been proposed was wrong?
Ideally, there ought to be at least one voice of reason in a sporting team; the player with a moral compass who won’t allow for his team to stray off the path of what is right and what is decent.
Diverse voices in the dressing-room: Nathan Bracken celebrates a wicket with his Australian teammates against the West Indies at the Gabba in 2005.
That trait doesn’t necessarily make them the most popular member of the squad, but they are respected – even if it is begrudged – and they prove their worth in situations like the one the national team is now embroiled in.
I don’t even know who is in the Australian team’s leadership group, but when news broke of the meeting that decided it might be a good idea to use yellow-coloured sticky tape as a tool to rough up the ball, I wondered about the team’s environment.
It’s without any fear of contradiction that I say the Australian teams I played for contained men who would have questioned the edict to tamper with the ball. I was never put in the situation where I was tested to protest against such a scenario, but I like to believe I would have argued the toss.
Before the events that have unfolded in South Africa, I would have believed the current Australian team contained players in the leadership group with a similar mindset. I wondered whether the players feel empowered enough to speak up and to go against the grain? I asked myself whether Cameron Bancroft, who is only a few games into his Test career, felt as though he had no choice but to do what he was told because he feared – perhaps wrongly – that to refuse might go against him at the selection table?
Of all the players in the Australian team, why was Bancroft the one who was painted into a corner? There’s those who will say his fielding position – one where he gets his hands on the ball a lot – was the reason why the deed fell upon him.
It could (and probably will) be alleged his vulnerability as a player who has already had questions raised about his place in the team made him the ideal candidate. If that is the reason, he has my sympathy because few people will ever appreciate that once a player is a part of the Australian team – especially a young bloke – staying in it becomes all consuming.
They study vision of themselves; their teammates; their opponents; the bowlers they’ll face ... they study statistics; they’ll read whatever is written about them and those players who are vying for their position and they never really feel as though they have cemented their spot.
However, I believe the players who were a part of the conversation that came up with the idea ought to follow Smith's and Bancroft’s lead and show their faces and own up to their part in what is being described around the world as ‘‘premeditated cheating’’ to clear those who weren’t.
I wondered whether the players feel empowered enough to speak up and to go against the grain?
I heard Cricket Australia’s chief executive James Sutherland’s comments on the crisis, and he summed the situation up well. It is a ‘‘very sad’’ day for the game. He has already ticked the boxes by sending the head of integrity Iain Roy and high performance manager Pat Howard over to South Africa to launch a thorough investigation. The third box will be more challenging – and that’s to take decisive action.
If Sutherland needs inspiration he should recall how Michael Clarke realised he would lose a great friendship with Andrew Symonds when he disciplined Symonds by axing him from the team for going on a fishing trip rather than attending a team meeting in Darwin.
The split created bad headlines, but it said a lot for the standards that the Australian cricket team set back then.