I was only 15 when I began loathing Australians. In my youthful naivete, I signed up to an exchange programme which left me with a Melbourne teen lodging in my house. They were three of the worst weeks of my life. He encapsulated all of the most irritating qualities of the benighted inhabitants of that critter-infested, convict-friendly continent of mud. He moaned, he was rude, and he was utterly uninterested in anything culturally enriching or personally enlightening. When he left for Heathrow, I cheered. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t follow him to Oz. As I’ve gotten older, my feelings haven’t mellowed. I have met a few decent Aussies- my colleague Noa Hoffman is superb – but most have been awful. Even Kylie, an honorary Brit, let me down by moving back Down Under.
The investigation was a cowardly damage limitation exercise, a cover up far worse than the crime
Admittedly, any chance of me developing a tolerance for the Aussies has long been hindered by my love of cricket. But as the ongoing runctions about ‘Sandpapergate’ have revealed, top Australian cricketers might be cheats and liars – chippy whingebags who can dish it out but can’t take it and who don’t deserve a shred of sympathy. If the ongoing revelations from Usman Khawaja’s new book cause Aussie cricket to collapse just in time for this summer’s Ashes, all the better.
For the uninitiated, newly retired batsman Khawaja has claimed that the entire Australian team knew about efforts to use sandpaper to alter the ball in the third Test against South Africa in 2018. After the cheating was spotted, Australian cricket descended into self-flagellation, with temporary bans for captain Steve Smith – who cried on the telly, as the Barmy Army will never let him forget – his deputy David Warner and Cameron Bancroft, the batsman spotted with the offending sandpaper. A Cricket Australia investigation cleared the bowlers and backroom staff; when Bancroft hinted others might have known in 2021, it unofficially ended his international career and elicited a sharp denial from Pat Cummins, the current captain.
Khawaja’s noble decision to wait a full eight years until he was out of the side with a book to sell is a characteristically mature and high-minded choice from a man who never struggles to find something to complain about. Nonetheless, his decision to reopen debate is a welcome one. Despite Cricket Australia’s attempts to close it down, Warner has given his former opening partner his backing. Ex-players are calling for a new investigation.
But what is most remarkable is just how unsurprising this all is – the revelation of an open secret. Pinning it on only three players suited Cricket Australia just fine, especially when Smith and Warner could be back in the side after a year. But the idea that the bowlers didn’t know what was going on with the ball that they were bowling with was always absurd. The investigation was a cowardly damage limitation exercise, a cover up far worse than the crime.
Smith has a pantomime villain quality. But Cummins seems whiter-than-white: a supremely talented bowler gifted with Action Man good looks and a tedious penchant for virtue-signalling about climate change and the poor old Aboriginals. Yet he has so far remained silent, allowing Khawaja to take the flack for ratting on his mates while he waits for the heat to die down. Nothing to see here, cobber. Have you heard about the plight of the Mungguy people?
But either Khawaja is lying or Cummins is. If the latter is the case, the Australian captain should ‘fess up and resign. Those players who joined Cummins in denying any knowledge – such as Mitchell Starc, Nathan Lyon and Josh Hazlewood – should also retire from international cricket in shame. But that is English wishful thinking. Denial seems the order of the day. Cummins is too valuable; Cricket Australia too shameless. It was all a long time ago, and there’s an Ashes to win.
Australia don’t play another Test until December. Before that is a set of ODIs and T20s against us Poms. While England might enjoy their opponents squirming whenever close to a microphone, the real joy will be if this forces greater cracks in an already-flagging Aussie side. They recently lost to Bangladesh at home and surrendered their position atop the world rankings to South Africa on their first tour since ‘Sandpapergate’. While the side’s core remains formidable – including Cummins, Smith, and Starc – the fact that so many of them were playing in 2018 brings home their ageing. Compare that to a young England side which seems to have – fingers crossed – put a summer of scandal behind it. This also means the 2017-18 Ashes series was void, naturally.
Ultimately, my disdain for Australians stems from jealousy. England haven’t won an Ashes since 2015, surrendering prime opportunities to do so in both 2023 and last Christmas; English cricket has an instinct for a self-sabotage greater even than its Antipodean equivalent’s for self-preservation. Winning next summer because of a nervous breakdown in Australian cricket might seem a little unsporting. But the Aussies would know all about that.
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