Australian cricketers Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft’s ball tampering during a test match in South Africa was captured by multiple cameras and transmitted around the world. As was Bancroft’s comically indiscreet cover-up, and the pair’s desperate deceit of the umpires.
To follow Australian cricket is often to accept our sweet exceptionalism: Aussies play hard but fair. Always. It’s a mantra in this country, but in every other cricketing nation it’s viewed as sanctimonious bullshit. Cricket’s a wonderful game, writes Martin McKenzie-Murray, but if you think it’s a paragon of virtue, you haven’t been paying attention.
Plus: Paul Bongiorno on Tony Abbott and Pauline Hanson, Karen Middleton on the arrival of senator Tim Storer, Mike Seccombe on how the government is punishing remote Indigenous communities, and Greg Foyster on Cambridge Analytica.
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The Saturday Paper
