Cricket Australia to probe ball-tampering, no action yet

Cricket fans hoping for a swift resolution to the Australian test team’s ball-tampering scandal won’t get it.

Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland said an investigative team would be sent to South Africa immediately to look into all aspects of the case before a decision is made on what action to take. That could take several days.

Calling it a “very sad day for Australian cricket,” Sutherland on Sunday said he was “extremely disappointed and shocked” by the news from emerged from the third test match at Cape Town on Saturday.

“Australian cricket fans want to be proud of their cricket team,” Sutherland said. “I feel this morning they have every reason to wake up and not be proud of the team.”

Sutherland said one of the cornerstones of cricket was to not only play within the laws of the game, but within the spirit of the game.

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“Activities on the field yesterday, are neither within the laws of the game or the spirit of the game,” he said.

Australia cricketers confessed to ball tampering in a desperate plot hatched by the team’s leaders as they saw the match slipping away.

Batsman Cameron Bancroft was tasked with carrying out the tampering by using yellow adhesive tape to pick up “granules” beside the pitch and rub it on the ball to rough it up in an attempt to get it to reverse swing at Newlands.

But Bancroft was caught doing it on the field by television cameras, and then attempted to hide the evidence by shoving the tape down his trousers before he was questioned by umpires.

“The leadership group knew about it,” Australia captain Steve Smith said, admitting he and other senior players planned during a break in play how to tamper with the ball. “We spoke about it at lunch. I’m not proud of what’s happened. It’s not within the spirit of the game.”

When Sutherland announced he would be speaking to the media at noon Sunday in front of Cricket Australia’s corporate offices in Melbourne, commentators and former cricketers wondered whether Smith and other team members would be fired or sanctioned immediately.

But Sutherland’s decision was to wait until he has more information, and Smith has said he has no intention of quitting the captaincy.

Sutherland said Cricket Australia is sending its head of integrity, Iain Roy, and high performance manager, Pat Howard, to South Africa to investigate the scandal. He refused to make comment on Smith’s long-term position as captain.

“We are in the middle of the game right now and that game needs to conclude. But over the course of the next couple of days we will get to the bottom of this and we will take appropriate action,” Sutherland said.

Australia trails South Africa by 294 runs with two days of the test remaining. The four-test series is level 1-1.

In the fallout from the scandal, former cricketers have described it as a “national day of shame.”

Former test batsman Simon Katich has no doubt what Sutherland’s action should be — believing Smith and coach Darren Lehmann must go.

Katich said he was “sick to his stomach” when he woke up to the news.

“They’ve got no option because this was premeditated and calculated at the break, and those guys are in charge of Cameron Bancroft behaving the way he did,” Katich said on SEN Radio.

Ball tampering is not new in cricket — players have in the past tried to manipulate the leather ball to make it move in unusual ways to confuse batters.

As recently as South Africa’s last tour to Australia in 2016, South Africa captain Faf du Plessis was found guilty by the International Cricket Council of ball tampering after TV footage showed him putting his fingers in his mouth while he was sucking a mint, then shining the ball with sticky fingers.

Cricket South Africa appealed the verdict, and du Plessis said he was unfairly made a scapegoat for doing something that cricketers all over the world have long done.

Regardless, the tampering headlines overshadowed the series and most of the ardent criticism came from Australia. The Australian teams have always claimed to play hard but fair, and to rarely “cross the line” in cricket.

The difference between this tampering case and others is the clear premeditation by the Australians, the attempts to hide it when queried by on-field umpires and their previous condemnation of cheating, which now appears to be hypocritical.

The Australian government agency responsible for allocating sports funding demanded a faster, harsher reaction than Cricket Australia was taking.

Australian Sports Commission chairman John Wylie described the Australian cricket team “iconic representatives of our country” and the example the players set “matters a great deal to Australia.”

“Given the admission by Australian captain Steve Smith, the ASC calls for him to be stood down immediately by Cricket Australia, along with any other members of the team leadership group or coaching staff who had prior awareness of, or involvement in, the plan to tamper with the ball,” Wylie said. “This can occur while Cricket Australia completes a full investigation.”

Former Australia test captain Michael Clarke was also strident in his criticism, and refused to rule out a possible return to the test team, possibly as captain. He retired from test cricket in 2015 but is still active in the sport.

“If I was asked by the right people, then I would think about my answer,” Clarke said.

He left no doubt as to his thoughts on what transpired at Newlands on Saturday afternoon.

“It is blatant cheating. It is disgraceful. It is not accepted by anyone, particularly in Australia,” Clarke said. “We’ve got the best bowling attack in the world. We don’t need to cheat to beat anybody.”

Dennis Passa, The Associated Press