The actions of Australian cricket captain Steve Smith and his leadership group, who encouraged their promising young opening batsman Cameron Bancroft to tamper with the ball, have seriously damaged the sport. Bancroft was caught scraping the ball with a flat yellow object, which he then hid in his underwear, as the cameras rolled during the Test between Australia and SA at Newlands in Cape Town on Saturday. For the uninitiated, Bancroft was altering the state of the ball to allow it to swing more prodigiously, an action that was likely to affect the outcome of the game by making batting exponentially more difficult. It is worth noting that Australia has become very good at inducing the ball to reverse swing in recent Test series, suggesting that such practices may have been going on for some time. The cheating has been condemned, and Smith has lost the captaincy. But the damage that this incident has done to the game is enormous. The appeal of Test cricket is that it is the ultimate...
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