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The one team that will be delighted by the ball-tampering scandal blowing up again is England, because it could completely dismantle an Australia side already under a huge amount of pressure.
Australia have a captain, Pat Cummins, in turmoil after losing a Test at home to Bangladesh and a series in South Africa , where his tactics were questionable, the attack is ageing and the batting desperately needs an injection of new blood.
There will be a lot of scrutiny now on Cummins and the bowlers who played in Cape Town and made a rod for their own backs when they wrote a statement in 2021 denying any knowledge of the sandpaper incident.
Now Usman Khawaja has blown that up. But this was always going to resurface. What I can’t understand is how Australia thought they would put this to bed. It has been an open secret in cricket circles. How the hell don’t you know something like that in a team environment?
We are all aware of who the ball-shiner is in a cricket side, even on a Sunday afternoon playing friendlies for your club team. The whole team are on it because you have to keep the ball dry. You can’t tell me the Australian team did not communicate that, or the bowlers were totally unaware of what was being done to the ball they were using.
The problem is that we are in an era where players are hellbent on protecting their own brands. They will go to any lengths to keep their reputations and in this situation three people were thrown under the bus, maybe under pressure from advisers. It is such a short-term choice.
We saw that with England and Harry Brook. They swept that under the carpet hoping it would all go away because they feared the negative headlines, only for it to haunt them at the end of the last Ashes.
The danger when players feel they have been singled out as scapegoats is that, eventually, people stop keeping quiet. What will have surprised Cricket Australia is that Khawaja is the one to have spoken first. He looks to be protecting his mate David Warner, who he has known since childhood.
I’m in Australia now for the winter and it has upset a few that he has said his “conscience” would not be clear if he had not said something and many are asking why it has taken eight years. It is hard not to think it is down to money. It did not come out at the time because Cricket Australia was scared of the damage to its sponsorships, and players protected their deals. Now Khawaja has to sell a book and fulfil a contract with a publisher.
But Khawaja will also have seen how Cameron Bancroft was never picked again by Australia after suggesting in an interview in 2021 that it was common sense to think the bowlers were in on the plan, which prompted their collective statement of denial in response.
England are here and about to play white-ball cricket against Australia. Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon are not involved in that series so might try to hide away, but the first press conference when they are back will be lively. They cannot run away for ever.
I thought at the time that the punishments for Steve Smith, Warner and Bancroft were too severe. They did not fit the crime. Ball-tampering in some form or another has been going on for years. Eating sweets and putting saliva on the ball or throwing it on the bounce to the keeper to scuff it up are common gamesmanship tactics. The stupid thing was taking sandpaper on to the pitch. That was dumb because it took it to a new level.
But I don’t believe there should be new bans dished out. How can you go back eight years and start slapping suspensions on people when the governing body has already passed judgment and had the choice at the time to investigate more than just the incident in Cape Town? Cricket Australia is as culpable as any of the players involved. It decided to narrow the scope of the investigation, creating the possibility for it to be exposed later down the line.
England will be loving this, and rightly so, but they still need to keep their own house in order and not just bet on the fact Australia will be broken by the time they arrive for our home summer. Australia are a resilient bunch, but this is going to be a difficult few weeks and a lot can happen between now and next summer. This has happened at the worst possible time for Cummins and his team.
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