Question: Is that word ‘cheating’?
Virat Kohli: “I didn’t say it, you did.”
Not so long ago, in a press conference room far, far away from Cape Town, sat Indian captain Virat Kohli, venting his frustration at what he thought was systemic cheating by Steve Smith and his Australian team. The incident that day involved Smith and Peter Handscomb (oh, cricket!) looking at the dressing room for assistance while deciding whether to review or not. The incident that has gone down in cricketing folklore as #DRSGate, saw Kohli come out in the open and say Australian cricketers repeatedly used the help of dressing room to decide on reviews, while Smith insisted it was nothing more than a one-time “brain fade.” As fiery that episode was, going to the extent of Cricket Australia’s chief saying Kohli doesn’t know the spelling for sorry, the powers that be decided not to drag it on. Whether the incident happened more than once, it was never properly investigated.
“There are lines you don’t cross on the cricket field,” Kohli had said then.
Fast forward to Newlands. March 24, 2018. Smith, this time sitting alongside Cameron Bancroft in the press conference room, admitted to breaking the rules of the game for the second time in a year. Stopping short of using the word “brain fade”, Smith said his “leadership group” decided to take matters into their own hands to get the ball to reverse, laws be damned. Bancroft, the junior-most member of the team, who happened to be “in the vicinity of the area when the leadership group were discussing it” was given the responsibility of carrying out the most gloriously ill-fated operation on a cricket field in recent times, that saw a piece of sticky yellow tape travelling from Bancroft’s kit-bag to, when it was last spotted, his underpants.
Forgetting everything else for a minute, the sheer nerve to think their team could pull off an orchestrated move to alter the conditions of the ball with so many cameras trained on them is incredible. It’s amazing that Smith, Bancroft and Australia’s “leadership group” thought they could get away with it.
Fool us once, shame on us, but fooling us twice, Mr. Smith?
No praise
The Smith-Kohli saga largely divided opinion. While there was no question that Smith did bend the rules of the game, his admittance of an error in judgement could be filed under the “credit to him for owning up” category. There was still leeway for that, then.
But to say Smith (and Bancroft, for that matter), deserved any plaudits for owning up to their mistakes on Saturday at the Newlands, is to miss the bigger picture of what exactly was the other choice in front of them anyway? When there is a one-minute-45-second footage that systematically broke down your worst-laid plan – including the oh-so-naive usage of walkie-talkie between coach Darren Lehman and substitute Handscomd (our friend from Bengaluru is back in a cameo!) – how else could the Australian team have reacted?
There are no prizes for ringing the bell of the door in a house you just robbed.
The reasoning that “this was the first time” something like this was happening under his captaincy is hard to believe either, when just two days prior to this, Pat Cummins was laughing off stepping on the ball with his spikes.
What this incident does highlight, however, is the hypocrisy that has been peddled from the Australian camp during this controversy-ridden series. David Warner, the man who has a reputation for being one of the most persistent sledgers, had every right to be upset if his family affairs were dragged onto the field but his holier-than-thou attitude in the press conference soon after did not sit right with many. Smith, ahead of this Test, did not let Kagiso Rabada’s ban being overturned slide under, asking “the ICC have set the standard now haven’t they?” Darren Lehmann, then, reacted angrily to a fan abusing Warner after his dismissal at Newlands, saying the crowd has gone too far (he’s right) but forgetting the Aussie crowd are the most notorious in the game in crossing the line.
All of them members of the “leadership group”, if one might add.
Take a long hard look, Steve
The line. The line that has been drawn and redrawn during the course of this series. The line that left many wondering who draws it and where does the crossing happen. But there was no doubt that, with the ball-tampering fiasco, the imaginary line, one that Australia have referred to repeatedly on this tour, was crossed and then some.
And that’s the stinger. Ball-tampering is not at the centerstage for the first time in cricket’s history. (There is a strong line of argument from well-respected voices in the game to legalise ball-tampering.) But what rankles is the context in which this drama has unfolded. A series that has seen some fantastic Test cricket, so much so that a highlights package could be used for a ‘Save Test Cricket’ campaign if the ICC should need one, has already been marred by unsavoury controversies where Australia’s tendency to take the moral high ground was increasingly grating on the nerves of neutrals following the game. And then Smith and Co decide to make it worse.
Fronting up with an apology works well if it is sincere and believable. But with the incidents between March 2017 in Bengaluru and March 2018 in Cape Town, it’s hard to give the Australian captain the benefit of doubt, even if he’s one of the greatest batsmen of the modern era.
Even in this day and age of 24-hour news cycles, where today’s breaking story is tomorrow’s forgotten lines, one can’t help but wonder if Smith has done far too great a damage to his reputation in the long run. The moral high ground is a dangerous place to be in. The slide downwards can happen in an instant, with consequences that are far-reaching. All it takes is a little push.
And for Steve Smith, it seems, the slide has begun.
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