Listen, there's nothing elite about a team that cheats

Australia coach Justin Langer

The sudden resignation of Iain Roy, the head of Cricket Australia's Integrity Unit (now there's an oxymoron!) has added further intrigue to a tumultuous few months for the beleaguered Australian cricket family. Coincidence it might be but coming in the same week as recent allegations of match-fixing by two Australian cricketers were aired by Al Jazeera, Roy's hasty and immediate exit stage left is more grist for the mill for local cricket fans who remain deeply skeptical of the reform agenda being promoted by the CA Board.
The announcement of Justin Langer as the new Australian coach was as predictable as the sequence of events that led to the Cape Town cheating incident, the (crocodile?) tears and the contradictory statements that have flowed ever since. The dust has settled, the caravan has moved on but it is still as clear as mud. So much of Langer's first press conference just made no sense when you look past the clichés and the cheap one-liners. Unlike the end-of-day media scrum at Newlands when Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft lied about events, this should have been more coherent and sensible. They can't hide behind any excuses about panicking or being rushed. If each statement had been planned, it is either an indictment of their planning or it reinforces the perception that they mistake the Australian public for fools.

"It was ANZAC Day a few weeks ago and one thing about Australia is mateship is really important. Elite mateship within the Australian cricket team is going to be a key value," said Langer.

Australia has long prided itself on this mythical notion of "mateship", making it almost sound like a unique nationalistic characteristic that other countries don't understand or possess. As a migrant to Australia in my early teens, it took some time to get my head around the legend of mateship and how it was forged in catastrophic battleground defeats in Turkey and the Western Front during World War 1. And so it came to pass that mateship became this thing of honour, this allegedly unique Australian value that is sacrosanct and dare not be questioned for fear of being accused of treachery.
I understand that now. Australia celebrates losses with a public holiday (ANZAC Day) to honour the fallen soldiers, the concept of mateship forged in blood and steel. What I am struggling to come to terms with is Langer's reference last week to the need for the new Australian team to broaden that concept to elite mateship. There is nothing elite about a sporting team that sledges opponents, or resorts to cheating or tell lies in much the same way that there is nothing elite about the brave Anzacs, lambs to the slaughter on the beaches of Gallipoli. Dying alongside your mates is tragic, sad and a complete waste of Australia's sons because it was a doomed mission but to call it elite is to dignify an unnecessary sacrifice. And to draw parallels between a cricket team that cheated and the Anzac heroes who merely followed orders is a big stretch, even for the most patriotic amongst us.
You know there's something seriously wrong when elite mateship in his all-conquering era was described by Langer as: "It was like a nightclub, it was awesome." Can there be anything more superficial, less wholesome, less values-driven than a nightclub? Is this now where the 'spirit' (pun intended) of elite mateship is cemented in modern Australian culture, not the blood-soaked beaches of Gallipoli or the muddy trenches of the Western Front but the nightclubs of the world where the great Australian cricket teams were truly born? Is that what the Cultural Review is going to recommend? More nightclubs, less sandpaper (or cameras), more elite mateship?
What in the world is that supposed to mean for a team that has yet to emerge from a period of darkness so painful that it required the sacking of the captain and vice-captain, long bans for three players, the resignation of the coach who apparently was in complete control of the team but knew nothing of the plot hatched by his leaders and a Culture Review that is set to cost millions, yet doesn't include investigating the role of the CEO or the Chairman (who presumably set the culture of the organisation)?
Maybe that's what elite mateship means. Your mates (bosses) are so elite that they are beyond scrutiny. Or maybe it means that despite the early promises that the search for a new coach would be an open process with international candidates considered, it ended up being anything but. The much-admired Langer got the job - his appointment was a foregone conclusion - no one in informed cricket circles truly believed that it was going to be anyone but their elite mate JL.
The rationale offered by CEO James Sutherland for the lack of consideration given to foreign coaches was that apparently Australia has the best coaches in the world. Of course. That makes perfect sense. Just as much sense as elite mateship. It's because we have the best coaches in the world that when our skills deserted us and the masters of sledging got rattled when the South Africans out-sledged them with crude references to Candice Warner, we gave up on going to the practice nets and visited the hardware store instead for a take-away order of finest grade sandpaper. Surely if we had the best coaches in the world, not just one of them but a room full of these elite mates, they might not only have been able to impart more skills but they might also have been aware that a dastardly plot to cheat was being hatched under their elite noses by the captain and vice-captain? Three or four of the best coaches in the world were on that tour, in the dressing room, presumably tuned in to the mood of the players (as good coaches should) and yet they were utterly unaware that a junior player had sandpaper in his pocket? And that's evidence that we have the best coaches in the world, a team that is sitting mid-table in the ICC rankings, despite having the best training facilities, stadiums, sports scientists and unlimited budgets?
So what did we do to effect long-term cultural change? We looked no further than our own backyard for a coach who, for all his admirable qualities, was part of the culture that led to this day of reckoning where we have finally woken up to the fact that our on-field behaviour has become so rotten that it needs a drastic overhaul. The reaction from most cricket-savvy folk I interviewed on this topic was that despite being immensely fond of Langer, they failed to see how this appointment was going to bring about a cultural turn-around. And with Darren Lehmann now given a role with the elite pathway players, despite failing in his role to create the proper culture with the main team, it appears like the famous Bangkok street vendors sales pitch of "same same but different."
It is worrying to hear the new coach refer to the banned trio as "great kids." Kids? Smith, Warner and Bancroft are 28, 31 and 25 years old for goodness sake. At what point are we going to stop treating them like kids and ask them to hold themselves accountable as grown men who are privileged to be given positions of rare honour and status in our society? They were leaders, they were heroes, they were role models but they were not kids. It's an insult to children actually. I coach and umpire junior cricket teams every weekend and there is no way that children are allowed to behave like this. We simply do not tolerate it from young kids but our national team, full of grown men, were encouraged to headbutt the line until they finally got caught on camera and now it's all hand-wringing, Cultural Reviews and an order of Elite Mateship please.
In a startling new revelation, JL offered this gem. "It's in our nature... we like to win." Oh well, that settles it then. Australians like to win because it's in our nature. That innocent statement hints at the crux of the problem. Maybe the need to win at all cost, at any cost, is the reason why we're in this sad situation now. The other countries that don't cheat or sledge mercilessly must not have it in their nature to like winning!

Elite mateship - what a load of psychobabble gobbledygook. Of all team sports, cricket is arguably the most individual, the one requiring the least "team dynamic." I have played cricket around the world for 30 years. There must have been hundreds of times when I played with people I had never even met before. We won as many as we lost. It was mainly down to individual skill, luck and the quality of the opponent. You don't need elite mateship to catch a ball at second slip, bowl an outswinger or play a cover drive. You just do these things if your skills allow you to. The winning IPL team is not the one with most elite mates - it's about getting some wonderful cricketers together for a month, hopefully getting to a point where they don't actively hate each other (and even that is probable in some cases) and then smashing the ball into the grandstand more often than your opponents do. The only thing elite about that is the salaries they get paid. Let's not pretend that they need to be best friends to win cricket matches.
In fact, in some senses, as was the case with the Australian cricket team, it might have been this misguided loyalty that led us to this Road to Damascus moment in the first place. None of Warner's so-called mates were prepared to tell him to pull his head in when he was behaving like a goose, despite knowing that he himself was ultra-sensitive to personal sledging. No one was prepared to tell their elite mates to behave in a manner befitting national heroes? There's a lesson in this for Team India - despite being on top of the world currently, is the dressing room culture strong enough to rein in Virat Kohli if the need arises? When they are winning, coaches, management and the Board encourage the proliferation of a culture that promulgates the sort of on-field abuse that eventually requires a complete culture overhaul. The sort of overhaul that ends up costing careers. Oh except when the CEO and Chairman are immune, when their positions are safe even when they drove the overall culture. That's elite mateship.

The author is a Brisbane-based first-class cricketer

Also Read: Michael Jeh: It's The Australian Way, You Know!

Catch up on all the latest sports news and updates here. Also download the new mid-day Android and iOS apps to get latest updates