Australian Cricket Cheats Show No Sport Is Clean Anymore

Australian cricket cheats rob South Africa of a fair match and the entire world of its faith in the sport of fair play and sportsmanship, and what is worse they appeared not to care. Any Australian gambling news reports concerning the Australian cricket cheats were just hype or overblown should probably take another look at the footage of their press conference afterward and wonder if we can ever believe cricket matches are safe to gamble on again when even the big name teams are cheating.

They ask, when you arrive in Australia, if you have a criminal record. There’s not an Englishman alive who has not then asked if that is still necessary. After all Australia is a former prison colony and calls us “whinging poms” partly because we find being in a nation full of deadly spiders, man-eating sharks and 1970s racism worthy of a few critical comments (especially when it’s so hot all the time) but mostly because they’re not very imaginative. Something the Australian cricket cheats proved perfectly.

Cheating in sports, particularly with drugs, has now become an epidemic. There isn’t a competitive cyclist who isn’t on something, the NFL is wall to wall steroid junkies and even curling has been tainted by these performance enhancing chemical concoctions. Curling? That’s like cheating at bowls or croquette ffs. This means that no one was particularly surprised when the Australian cricket cheats were unmasked by their own incompetence, after all people have been cheating in cricket for years now.

Did Australia Cheat Their Way To The Top Of World Cricket?

Mitchell Starc

There probably isn’t a drug that would improve your cricketing performance all that much, and if there were I’d encourage England to take buckets full after their disgraceful performance against New Zealand, however tampering with the ball has, along with simply throwing matches or fixing the statistics, been relatively regular. Indeed anyone that has bet on sports in Australia for very long will recall the fuss made about the accusations made against Pakistan cricketers and others in years gone by.

What made the Australian cricket cheats so unique was the brazen way they owned up when caught and simply sat there pretending it was something everyone did. Cameron Bancroft looked as contrite as a puppy next to a pile of poo and Steve Smith admitting the “leadership” knew about it in advance and still expecting to retain the captaincy bordered on the insane. Players queued up to say it was “embarrassing” as if that was the worst of it. Their feelings. Not the audience cheated out of fair play.

Australian Cricket Cheats Lay Waste To Sport’s Reputation

“Our cricketers are role models and cricket is synonymous with fair play. How can our team be engaged in cheating like this? It beggars belief.” Said Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull voicing the outrage of many who had to watch as the Australian cricket cheats couldn’t even keep what they were doing from the cameras. Cheating is bad, incompetent cheating is just unforgivable and for Smith and co to have roped in the most junior member of the team to assist them is just horrific.

Bancroft’s career will now be blighted by this, and if there’s any justice Steve Smith and the other members of the “leadership” that sanctioned these Australian cricket cheats won’t have a job at all. When we take advantage of Australian gambling laws to place a wager on a match we expect it to be a level playing field, and that the overpaid posing professionals aren’t going to make a mockery of the spirit and rules of the sport right before our eyes. Sadly Australia destroyed that myth last weekend.