Cricket is a great sport and Australia can claim to be its foremost proponents. They are amongst the earliest practitioners and the most consistently successful team of the sport. But today, Australian cricket is mired in a deep controversy, possibly its most serious since the Bodyline series of 1932-33. Day three of the third test with South Africa saw the newest member of the team Cameroon Bancroft caught trying to tamper with the ball, on live camera. The incident continues to snowball exponentially.
Past - from Steve Waugh onwards
At its heart, there is problem with Australian cricket, one which has been brewing for many years. By most accounts that I have read, cricket used to much better behaved than what my generation has grown up seeing. It was called a ‘gentleman’s game’, an epithet used rarely, and rather laboriously now. Cricket was started by the British and it readily accepted the Victorian era etiquette. It was a no-contact sport unlike boxing, football, hockey, or rugby, all of which have established tradition of aggression and violence on the field. Cricket was always more about skill and less about physical machismo. Also, the fact that cricket is more complicated with many grey areas, and borderline issues, make it necessary to accept the spirit of the sport, beyond the written law.
In the videos of test cricket of 60s, 70s, and 80s, fall of a wicket would see the bowler raise his hands in celebration, or slowly trudge down the wicket where his teammates would assemble, and congratulate each other, shaking hands, or patting the back. This is in sharp contrast to today’s high octane, adrenaline fuelled celebrations. This is not to say that cricket was all saintly then. There are plenty of instances of aggressive behaviour by cricketers then - Holding’s tour of New Zealand where he kicked the stumps and shoulder-bumped the umpire; and near fisticuffs between Dennis Lillee and Javed Miandad. But such incidents were few and far between. As per most accounts, the West Indian fearsome fast bowlers were well behaved - they would terrorise with their bowling without resorting to antics.
But as Mike Brearly rightly says “it is commonplace that modern sport, like society in general, exhibits more violence, aggression, and dissent than it once did, and that cricket is no exception.” And Australia has been at the forefront of this degradation. To me, the current phase of Australian cricket started from Steve Waugh’s reign, at least in the sense that it became systematic to be brash. Steve Waugh developed a strong team which achieved an astounding run of 16 straight test victories. This was a superb team, with each player special in his own right - Waugh brothers, McGrath, Warne, Gilchrist, Martyn, Ponting etc. This team could win matches from seemingly hopeless positions. It was inspiring to watch them and they won the respect of fans around the world with their never-say-die attitude. Growing up watching this team, I developed a respect for the mental toughness of Aussie cricket, which I have held till today.
However, alongwith the growth of the Aussie team for which Steve Waugh is rightly credited, I think he also developed a strongly aggressive, in-your-face attitude. He is credited with the term ‘mental disintegration’ which stands for verbal jousting with the opposition in order to unsettle them. This would typically start before any big series, with interviews of members of the Aussie side targeting key players of the opposition. And it would continue onto the field of play with constant chatter by the Aussies. Australian media and crowds too played important roles in this. Steve Waugh made many emblems - the Baggy Green, the team song, the designated team singer etc to enshrine the ‘Aussie attitude’. Over the years, the Aussie public adopted these emblems and they started to be seen as essentials of a well-knit, relentless, tough unit. The best part was that the team was so good that it was able to carry on the machismo, theirs were not senseless threats. They could back words with actions. This in a weird sense justified their acts. (However, the argument can also be flipped - that team was so great that it could have won without the shenanigans, so why bother). They have earned legions of supporters for their attitude. Indian team, and its captain Virat Kohli seems to be inspired by them.
The problem is not with having a strategy of intimidation - it can be subtle and clever and perfectly fine. Before the whole issue of sledging came into limelight, it was always what it was supposed to be - a banter. Playing for five consecutive days, some words are likely to get thrown, some nasty. There used to be an email forward which listed famous sledging incidents of the past, some going back more than 50 years. Most of those were really humorous, involving smart quips, mockery, gentle jibing, or repartee. So harmless that even the teammates of the mocked guy would have a laugh (eg - “At least I am the best player in my family” - hilarious).
But the Aussie teams have gone way ahead, becoming downright nasty. They have tried to bend the rules and the spirit of the game. Gradually it has become an essential part of their strategy. Waugh made it into an art form, and the legacy has been carried forward by Ponting, Clarke and Smith. Over the years, numerous ugly incidents have piled up with players shouting, abusing, allegations, counter-allegations, fines, suspensions. Interestingly, most such incidents feature an Australian player. I am sure playful jibing happens but that never gets reported as much. Instead what we get to see and hear are vicious, vile expressions of anger. These are extremely unpleasant to see or hear, except to media and to voyeurs who peddle videos relentlessly.
Whenever an incident flares up, Aussies have argued on similar lines - ‘playing hard cricket’, ‘passion for country’, ‘tough as nails’ etc. Now it has become difficult to separate the mask from the wearer. Aussies have taken this approach so dearly to heart that they feel vulnerable without it. A classic example was the tenure of coach Mickey Arthur, when his moderate success was partly attributed to making the Aussie team culture too soft. His successor, Darren Lehmann (the same person who, in 2013, hoped that the Aussie crowds rally behind Stuart Broad so that he goes back home crying!) was believed to be capable of bringing back the ‘Aussie attitude’ (read combative).
Sport involves harnessing inner strength, aggression, and mental fortitude to get the best results. At the highest levels, players have to put in extreme effort, and face intense competition. Five days of a test match are hard on the players, emotionally and mentally. All of this can lead to an outpouring on the field. A fast bowler is almost channelising his animalistic spirit while running in and on getting the batsman out, he can get carried away with the emotions. But the Aussie teams have made these arguments a justification for all sorts of behaviour. For long they have stood behind words like ‘pride’, ‘passion’, ‘heat of the moment’, ‘big heart’ etc. But they don’t wash - because learning to control emotions is also an essential quality for any sportsman. And if such arguments were accepted, they can justify abuses in other sports as well - tennis is equally exhausting.
Once in a while the audience may like brashness on the field of play, a bit of street fight, but on a consistent basis it is best to see skilled sportsmen win while maintaining decorum and respect for others and the sport. There are examples - New Zealand and South Africa teams are well behaved and are no pushovers either. Agree one does not applaud them for mental toughness as one appreciates the Aussies, but they are more pleasant to watch. A tough, but well behaved competition is not as utopian as the Australian establishment would like the viewers to believe. As Mark Nicholas said in his ever-so-eloquent way: “It is not a softer game we look for but a kinder one.”
Yet the Australian teams have acquired the moral high ground on the whole issue, by constantly claiming that their behaviour is not just legal but also moral. This is justified by claiming to stay behind the ‘line’ of morality and decency. This ‘line’ has become an oft-quoted explanation by the team, so much so that it has now become a source of mockery - Lyon even used the phrase ‘head butting the line’. This mythical line is Aussies’ interpretation of right and wrong, which too is highly flexible. They have failed to acknowledge cultural nuances, personal differences, emotions of others, always putting their interpretation on top. So much so that now nobody seems to take their explanations seriously. And when they are the ones complaining, they absolutely lose sympathy or audience, as has been the case during the recent South Africa series.
Burden of Legacy
After the strong team of Steve Waugh, the later Australian teams, while good, have not been of the similar calibre. But they nevertheless carry the legacy of being ‘tough Aussies’. This burden of an image which the skills cannot always justify, can force men to strange things. It has almost become the case of the tail wagging the dog.
To me the key problem with Aussie behaviour and their sledging is that they have institutionalised it. It is no more a spur-of-the-moment, carried-off-in-emotion thing, which can be the only acceptable, though weak, justification. Instead, Australia has made it a planned strategy. They identify players to target, personnel to carry out the strategy, best times to do it, how to avoid getting caught, the jingbang. Last few years has seen a steady stream of Aussie players, who though highly talented, but are equally infamous for their belligerence - Slater, Hayden, McGrath, Symonds, Ponting, Clarke, Warner, and Lyon. It is similar to ice hockey where a few players are designated to be smashers. Now, their moment of truth has come, albeit in the most rude form possible.
Back to the Present
The current incident is a watershed for the Australian cricket. This series had already shown how things were getting out of hand. Smith, incredibly talented batsman that he is, was in no control of the bullying culture pervading in his team. While sledging and tampering are two different issues, to me it is a larger culture issue which has eventually come to its head. Once you decide to go down a road, deciding when and where to stop becomes difficult. In this case, Aussies had been sinking deeper into the mire of what started as mental disintegration, normal banter, descending into downright brazenness, and eventually becoming a valid culture, of which only the Aussies were the custodians.
Nevertheless, one thing is still strange. Smith said that they were driven to tampering by desperation. But I wonder what caused such desperation. At the time of lunch on day 3 when the ‘leadership group’ hatched the plan, South Africa was 121 runs ahead in second innings with 9 wickets left. While Australia was behind, they were not insurmountably so. There was plenty of time and opportunities when the match could have turned for them - South Africa had lost wickets in heaps before. Even if Australia lost the match, one more test was to follow where Australia could have levelled the series. And while a keen contest, Australia-South Africa is not an arch rivalry, like the Ashes or India-Pakistan, where the prospect of losing can bring desperation. So what was the tipping point?
I think it was a culmination of many factors which had been brewing up over this series. First test ended with ugly confrontation between David Warner and Quinton de Kock wherein Warner accused de Kock of making personal remarks pertaining to his wife. There were also minor incidents - of Warner shouting madly in triumph at Aiden Markram after AB De Villiers (ABD) was run out because of Markram’s carelessness, and of Nathan Lyon dropping the ball on the prostate ABD after running him out. ABD had prophetically said at the end of the first test that this would be a series to remember (I am sure he would not have imagined he would be so grimly accurate), which I read as a statement of the team’s determination to turn things around. Australia won that test but the incidents sparked a resolve in South Africa and they just blew away Australia in the second test, with ABD and Kagiso Rabada being the primary tormentors. But Rabada, only 22, got too carried away, making two foolish mistakes - shouldering Smith, and shouting at Warner after getting them out. These events earned him a suspension from the remaining two tests which would have significantly boosted Australia’s chances. But he was reprieved in a successful appeal to ICC , just the day before the third test was to begin. That would have jolted the Aussies.
So the series was already acrimonious. On top, at the beginning of the third test, there were incidents of verbal abuse by the South African crowd at the Australian players. One spectator had to be evicted for making comments to Warner while he was climbing to the dressing room after getting out. I sense all these events had pushed Aussies over the edge. They may have felt they were losing out the battles not just on the field but byond it, with injustices such as QDK’s slurs, Rabada going free, and the crowd having its way.
Reactions from Australia
Day four of the third test was a sombre affair. It was so grim that it was difficult to enjoy the match. It seemed as if life had been sucked out of the competition. One wondered about the motivation levels of the Aussie team, for that matter focus of the South African team. Genuinity of the efforts and intentions of everybody came under doubt. Everything was under a pall of disbelief and distrust. Personally also, I am feeling gutted. Australia was one team you could trust to be competitive, whether you liked their methods or not. But now that trust has been robbed.
Australia is in a state of anguish - media, public, Cricket Australia, even the Prime Minister, all have taken this incident very seriously. A code of conduct enquiry has been initiated. The country is taking a much harsher stand than the rest of the world. ICC does not see this with as much severity, as is evident from the punishment that have been handed to Smith. Even many ex-cricketers of other countries have been considerate and acknowledged that tampering is fairly prevalent and old practise.
Australia has always been a sports loving country and they are finding it hard to accept that their own could do such a thing. But ball tampering is nothing new in cricket and many reputed players including Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Faf du Plessis have been found guilty of it in the past. Intentional or unintentional, ball tampering has mostly been seen as a spur-of-the-moment error in judgement, a little slip of character in a desperate situation. None of the reputed players mentioned above have lost their reputation over ball-tampering (the fact that they refuted the charges is one factor).
But the latest episode has become severe for many reasons. Smith acknowledged that it was planned in advance by the ‘leadership group’ of the team, including himself. It was a collusive, well thought out act of flouting the rules of the game, or gaining unfair advantage. Incidents of collusive ball-tampering have been mostly in whispers and hearsays, about Pakistan team of few decades back. While many players say that ball-tampering is common, there has been no proven instance of a team-wide collaboration before this. The act of scheming, and plotting makes it look devious and to see a large group behaving immorally makes it worse. While Smith has said that the coaching staff was not involved, it is difficult to believe.
Further, the way the whole incident played out in front of a live audience made it look sleazy. Bancroft was caught red handed - first with tampering, then with his attempt at covering-up, and then lying when he was questioned by the umpires. The way all the events were pieced together made it uglier. The audience was given the chance to bring their emotions, a classic case of reality TV.
Another worrying aspect is that a junior member of the team was entrusted to carry out the plan. It is definitely brave of Smith to admit that he was part of the decision, although his hand was forced by the fact that the junior-most member of the team was caught doing it. Smith would have found it difficult to leave Bancroft to hang. Interestingly, it might have been better for the Australian ‘leadership group’ to entrust the task of executing their plan to a senior member. Than at least it could have been blamed on the individual only, passed on as an error in judgement, ending with a milder punishment. The interesting question in the now infamous press conference was what would have been Smith’s thinking had he not been caught. He said he would have felt bad about it all throughout, but I doubt it.
I am a bit ambivalent about reactions from Australia. The deterioration in the team’s culture was evident for many years now. And the Aussie public as well as institution had made no dissenting voice, apart from platitudes after each incident. (now it is being reported that Australian public had already become wary of the behaviour of their team off late) It is a somewhat similar case of a father expressing shock when a teenage son has caused a major accident, when in the past parking tickets, or red light jumping were overlooked. I accept that the degree makes all the difference, and small peccadillos do not prepare one for a crime. Agreeably, such an incident puts all Aussie cricketers, past or present, under suspicion as Adam Gilchrist has pointed out. Now, all Aussie wins will be put under microscope, or become subject of ridicule. And this can spread to other sports as well. Sports is what Australians love the most, and their ethics have been tarnished.
Despite all this, I feel the reaction is too harsh. The guys have not committed as serious a crime as match-fixing (in the past, Mark Waugh and Shane Warne have accepted to sharing information with bookies for money). The larger discussion remains on whether ball-tampering can be legalised. Indeed there are advocates of allowing some form of treatment of the ball to even the scales which have been tipping in favour of the batsmen over the years. The extent to which this incident has shaken the cricketing world, one hopes something better comes of it. But not in the form of permanent exits of players of caliber of Smith and Warner. I would love to see their cleaner, milder versions.
PS: there was a press conference a few months back during the Ashes series where Bancroft and Smith are discussing the head-butting by Johnny Bairstow. Given the Aussie supremacy during the Ashes, both Smith and Bancroft are having great fun in that press conference, although there was nothing malicious. There is even a picture of Smith holding his laughter and Bancroft with an amused but confident look on his face. Contrasting that with the pictures and video of the last press conference these two did together, one gets a sense of fatality and of the endless cycle of life.
