Trying to work out what the core thing is - some unthought through thoughts

lardbucket wrote:Your right, taips is serious. Can't see the difference between match fixing or spot fixing for corrupt payment and ball tampering, but wants the use of mints or a zipper as a tampering tool to be massively different to tampering using a scrap of sandpaper.

And I see Faf has weighed in now in the same vein, holier than ever ...

I've given Faf some latitude in the past, but the evidence is in, he really is just a qunt. Already caught twice and found guilty of ball-tampering twice (scraping the ball on his zipper, polishing it with mints), his best bowler has been caught and sanctioned once for picking at the seam, and he's captain of a team that had the ball reverse swinging miles after a mere 18 overs in the last Test. It'd be instructive to challenge him to deny in public that he and his side have not indulged in ball-tampering during this very same series; I wonder if he's got the gall.  He's a lying piece of shit. Not only a cheat, but a lying amnestic cheat. Just slink off and die. We'll punish our own appropriately for descending into the sewer, but don't you think for a second that you've escaped from it.

lardbucket wrote:LN2:

Your average Australian fan has grown (through experience) to expect some players from other nations to cheat, and to squirm and lie afterwards until they are wrist-slapped or even pardoned by the ICC, whether that cheating is at Sarfraz Nawaz, Michael Atherton, Wasim and Waqar, Hansie Cronje, Rahul Dravid, team mint policy, or Mohammed Amir level.

If someone from their own team cheats, though, the public clearly expect CA to penalise that player heavily, more heavily than the pissweak ICC. They also 'write off' that cheating player off for life.  Trevor Chappell, who gave an interesting view the other night, and whose life has been ruined by one act, whose marriage broke down, and who hasn't spoken to his brother in over ten years, is an example of this.  He hasn't moved for 35+ years without someone calling him out on that one delivery.  What he said, and I believe it, is that Australian society will punish Warner and Smith more severely than either the ICC or even CA.  Bancroft's career and perhaps life have also been ruined.  At the end of the day it's the totally unforgiving Australian public, not the players or the board, who believe that the phrase 'it's not cricket' still means something, that our cricketers must never cheat, and if/when they do, they will pay for it with their honour if not their lives.  Smith, Warner are the true Hollow Men, they and Bancroft will never play for Australia again.

You see this collective unforgiving national response as sanctimonious ... but the reality is that Australians have an almost religious attachment to cricket and the idea of fair play.  Yes the Australian fan will squeal and point fingers accusingly when players from other nations cheat, but he has no expectation that those players will be punished by their boards or public. If one of their own cheats, though, that player is as good as dead ... to select these players again would be akin to John Hewson entering THAT election with the dead cat of GST hanging around his neck, while previously loyal voters ran screaming for the exits. Within 24 hours of this recent event, 89% of the polled Australian public wanted Smith gone, banned for life. No pissweak ICC sanction was ever going to suffice.

Perhaps Smith's actions and the evolving results might be summarised by the old motto ... if you can't be a good example, you can at least serve as a warning for others.  If CA does hand out severe penalties now, and it looks like 12-month bans at a bare minimum for all 3 involved (longer for Warner) the pressure will be on ICC and other boards to act more appropriately if other players are 'caught out' in future.

lardbucket wrote:Was Cronje punished by CSA? Was Amir punished by the Pakistani board? No, it was the ICC on those occasions. Reasonable punishments in those cases.

Warne and Waugh were punished by CA. The ICC were not involved.

Warne served a year (WADA) for taking a diuretic.

So it's been a piss-take from beginning to end.

Bradman wrote:Well Waugh at least,  he was crap.  What sort of idiot would ban Warns.

lardbucket wrote:Your right, taips is serious. Can't see the difference between match fixing or spot fixing for corrupt payment and ball tampering, but wants the use of mints or a zipper as a tampering tool to be massively different to tampering using a scrap of sandpaper.

And I see Faf has weighed in now in the same vein, holier than ever ...

I've given Faf some latitude in the past, but the evidence is in, he really is just a qunt. Already caught twice and found guilty of ball-tampering twice (scraping the ball on his zipper, polishing it with mints), his best bowler has been caught and sanctioned once for picking at the seam, and he's captain of a team that had the ball reverse swinging miles after a mere 18 overs in the last Test. It'd be instructive to challenge him to deny in public that he and his side have not indulged in ball-tampering during this very same series; I wonder if he's got the gall. He's a lying piece of shit. Not only a cheat, but a lying amnestic cheat. Just slink off and die. We'll punish our own appropriately for descending into the sewer, but don't you think for a second that you've escaped from it.