BALL-TAMPERING
Cricket discovers impermanence of its moral pedestal
The implication is clear: the Aussies have been fiddling with the ball for far longer than anyone realised, writes Luke Alfred
One of the problems with a nation being sniffy about the rest of the world’s foibles is that when one of theirs makes a mistake, the rest of the world has a field day. It is rather like the teacher’s pet being caught smoking during break. Everyone feels temporarily better about themselves because a supposed paragon of virtue has been exposed. Suddenly they are revealed to be humanly frail — just like the rest —– and we gloat long and hard. The Australian cricket team’s ball-tampering in the third Test at Newlands last weekend was an episode of skulduggery so ham-fisted that it had the habitues of Castle Corner snorting into their Castle Lites. Cameron Bancroft, one of the youngest members of the Aussie side and therefore vulnerable to all sorts of manipulation from inner-sanctum heavies, was caught on camera appearing to roughen the ball with soil grains from the pitch that adhered to sticky tape. In the 19th-century world of cricket such things aren’t done, certainly not in a sport...
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