Steve Smith, the disgraced captain of Australia’s cricket team, made it sound like a run-of-the-mill meeting of the sales team, discussing a plan to wrest market share from a rival company: “We spoke about it and thought it was a possible way of getting an advantage.”
What Smith and an undefined “leadership group” were in fact debating was how best to beat South Africa. Rather than playing within the rules and spirit of the game, they opted for ball-tampering — altering the surface of the ball so it moves in the air in unexpected ways. As a cowed Smith put it: “Obviously it didn’t work.”
That is an understatement. The tamperer, a young player called Cameron Bancroft, was caught by television cameras using tape to rough up the ball. The pictures were broadcast inside and outside the ground. “Once I was sighted on the screens, I panicked quite a lot,” Bancroft told the same extraordinary press conference, at which he and Smith confessed all.