I have just seen that Darren Lehman has complained officially about the South African crowd. Saying they stepped over a line. **** off! What a prick. They should have every book thrown at them and I hope that whichever Aussie team steps on a pitch, the opposing crowd just chant “cheat” as loud as possible. They’ve given it out and pushed boundaries for years. Cheating twats.
Smith and Warner have stepped down as captain and vice-captain for the rest of the current Test. I imagine the Australian Cricket Board will make that a permanent situation fairly quickly. It’s not just that they conspired to cheat, it’s that they leant on a junior member of the team, Bancroft, to implement the cheating. Utterly despicable and contemptible. This TMS Podcast has a lot to say and is well worth a listen: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06288bn
Warner has always been a classless mongrel... Someone has already got at his Wiki page, check his personal info on the right... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Warner_(cricketer)
That won’t be all. It’s not inconceivable that Cricket Australia could drop the current greatest Test batsman for a year or so. Maybe they could deduct all the runs he’s scored against England?
OK then, how about reinstating the wickets we lost to potentially artificially-induced reverse swing?
They're used for infractions of the code of conduct that don't justify suspension. They accumulate and can lead to suspensions, a bit like repeated yellow cards in football. There's an explanation here: http://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id/20289930/an-explainer-icc-demerit-points-system A one match ban seems at the low end of what I'd expect for Smith. Not totally unreasonable though. As a comparison the match referee who dealt with Atherton in 1994 said he would have given him a two match ban if Atherton hadn't lied to him.
These were David Warner’s words after the South African captain Faf Du Plessis was found guilty of ball-tampering in 2016: "We hold our heads high and I'd be very disappointed if one of our team members did that. The rules are in place for a reason. If you're not going to use them why bother having them? If you're going to overstep the mark, be prepared to get fined and miss Test matches." Wise words, David, and a pity you didn’t heed them when conspiring to cheat the other day.
The Aussies show a high level of duplicity whenever something like this happens. Cricket Australia (CA), the Australian Sports Commission (ASC) and even their Prime Minister have all waded in with moral outrage as if cheating was an unacceptable embarrassment for the whole country. Yet sledging (another form of cheating IMO), in it's current form was invented in Australia and is seen as not only ok but should be expected. That it is rife around the cricket world now takes nothing away from the fact that it was introduced by the "honest" Aussies. An individual not walking after edging the ball has been going on for years, but team policy of not walking seems to have been developed in Oz. I admire the competetive cricket and the players they have produced over the years but listening to their howls of disgust at being caught cheating has a hollow ring to it.
I might be completely wrong but I assumed the ICC were the governing body and in that sense it feels like the ban is no where near long enough. Baffles me that they're playing today!
My old boss is a hard nosed, anti-pomme, win at all cost Aussie.... he replied to my message earlier saying that Warner and Smith should never play again for Australia He called embarrassing and disgraceful.
Warner should've been banned after the assault on Root a few years ago, he's hardly stayed out of trouble since either. If you keep letting thugs off, they just take the p*ss more. Smith is probably too valuable to Australia to ban for long, but I think he'll never captain them again.
I don’t mind sledging as it can be quite funny. Can’t remember the cricketers involved but a conversation, trying to unsettle a batsman, went something like “Why are you so fat?”, to which the instant reply was “Every time I sleep with your wife, she gives me a biscuit”. Or another time, when a batsman kept playing and missing the ball, the bowler said “It’s red, it’s round and you’re supposed to hit it with your bat”. Next ball the batsman smashed the ball into the crowd, for six, and said to the bowler “You know what it looks like, now go and find it”.
