Art Vandelay_
TheBrownDog
- Oct 28, 2012
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Warner is a different kettle of fish. He's a very unlikable person, even Aussies don't like him.Agreed on face value, however I think it gets a bit more complex than that.
I don’t necessarily think it’s just about the ball tampering stuff with Warner, he’s got a long track record of dishing **** out. And this was just the icing on the cake for them, he’s fair game since.
Smith though, aside from that brain fade has been pretty unblemished otherwise. Copped his whack and has done his time in relative silence, and I feel for him a bit that his return to cricket was in England (where he was always going to cop it, the Ashes too).
Just on the ball tampering stuff, yes England have form too. Most teams quite likely too, however no one else is really silly enough to get caught (and lie about it afterwards).
The booing of Broad was because he didn’t walk, hardly a sin to be castigated over. This is where the hypocritical tag goes both ways. No one really made much noise when Symonds stood there after a clear edge off Sharma in the infamous Sydney test.
Many batsmen stand their ground. Crowds are going to do what crowds do, to an extent you can’t always control that.
But what hurts our position about being righteous about this is Darren Lehmann at the time. So rare to see a coach/manager at this level of professional sport say what he said, and against an arch rival like England that just adds unnecessary fuel to the fire.
It’s not great to see, especially Smith the other night being booed off after batting so well (and it took a ridiculously good catch to get him out). But I don’t think it’s going to go away anytime soon for him, it’s the new normal for him over there.
Smith fell on his sword when he wasn't involved in the cheating, his only crime was knowing and not demanding it be not done, he instead said I don't want to know about it. Went down the ignorance path. Booing him will do nothing, it'll spurn him on to do well.
But let me flip what Poms on an English forum have told me on its head.
They told me in March last year that there's no way only those 3 knew and the bowlers had to have known. Quite possibly true, but flipping that on its head, that means that arguably when Trescothick was in the slips in 05 rubbing lolly soaked saliva on the ball, that their bowlers probably knew. Always strange that Simon Jones, Freddie, Harmison and Hoggard got prodigious reverse swing that series yet Gillespie, Kasper, Lee and McGrath could not. They knew, and were given MBE's for their trouble.
Then there's Monty;
"Monty Panesar has made bombshell claims about the England cricket team that question whether its treatment of the ball in the field was legal throughout his international career.
The former England spinner, who played 50 Tests between 2006 and 2013, played a crucial role in ball-maintenance for the likes of James Anderson.
“We found that mints and sun cream had an effect on the saliva, and that helped the ball to reverse,” he revealed in an excerpt of his book ‘The Full Monty’, which appeared on the Daily Mail."
So my disdain for Broad isn't about not walking, the umpire is paid to make decisions so Broad v Symonds is not what I'm on about.
Broad and Anderson would have known, and if they didn't then they're incredibly daft not to notice sweets and sun cream on the ball, just like Starc and Cummins would have in March last year.
Hence, the stance by the UK media and fans is extremely hypocritical.