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Sydney Morning Herald and Stuff are owned by the same company, and often regurgitate stories across both platforms.
I don't condone the actions of the Australian cricket team, but they were caught, punished and publicly humiliated. It may have been practised long term, but without actual evidence it is just supposition.
Comparing the well used tactic of ball tampering to match fixing is ridiculous. Arrogance and competitiveness don't equate fraud.
All sportspeople go through peaks and troughs in their careers, and can be blamed upon other external factors such as physical or mental stress, which is to be expected at the highest levels of sport.
campervangogh-
Comparing the well used tactic of ball tampering to match fixing is ridiculous.
Nonsense. Comparing the well used tactic of ball tampering to the well used strategy of match fixing is perfectly sensible. It's cheating. Equating them may be of less use. Of more use might be adding the comparison of bowling a few materially inconsequential no-balls. There's a sliding scale of cheating cuntishness - the fact that Smith et al weren't betting on themselves seems to encourage some people to give them a free pass.
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You see, I don't agree with your classification of this as 'arrogance and competitiveness' - I appreciate it is only supposition that this was going on outside of this one instance, but then it's only supposition to assume it was a one-off - if this was a prolonged period of ball-tampering in a manner more brazen (and presumably effective) than any other that has ever been brought to light, this is a much greater fraud - to my mind as a fan- than some no-balls bowled to order that don't substantively impact the outcome of the game.
But, I also take @BRM's point below that the impact of the tampering may be being overstated but in the context of a close game one key wicket because of greater-than-expected reverse swing could be enormous. And we have to assume that if they were doing it, they were expecting some sort of result/benefit.
As I said before, it's impossible to know what a fair punishment is here - or even what a reasonable position to take on the matter is - without knowing how wide-spread this is throughout the game (have Eng/SA/india been bringing foreign objects onto the pitch to impact the condition of the ball? I imagine we'll find out in ~10 years time if they have) and for how long Australia were doing it. To my mine the only reasonable comparable from the examples you love listing is the kiwis with the bottle top and that was 30 years ago, the game has changed a lot since then.
But, I don't think this is an invalid conversation to be having and the defensive position of 'everyone's been doing it, they've been adequately punished, it's just competitive arrogance' doesn't sit right.
Anyway, Steve Smith may well be the best batsman of this generation and its a joy to watch him work at the moment. I just hope Archer has some answers at Lords...
kl
owl
It's hardly the only source discussing it (https://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/the-damning-numbers-that-reveal-australia-s-bowling-struggles-20190101-p50p1n.html, its been covered in the guardian and various podcasts etc), no debate that starc's a great bowler but to ignore that he's been unplayable at times when reverse swinging in tests over the past few years and we know what his team mates have been doing seems perverse. Does anyone really believe this was an isolated incident and that they got caught the first time they tried it ? Yeah, other teams have done stupid things and I'm really conflicted re whether I consider this punishment fair or not, but I do believe it merits further discussion. When you consider Amir got 6 months in prison and a 5 year ban for bowling a few no balls to order (for personal financial gain) its really murky. If we think the ozzies may have done this across a period of time, impacting results and hence also personal gain in performance bonuses and endorsements etc I really don't know where to come down in the issue. I can equally see the argument that it's not really that far from gratuitously throwing the ball into the pitch, roughing it on zips, using sweet saliva etc. Albeit massively more brazen/stupid...