First of all, and most importantly, I want to ask if you are OK? What about the kids? They’re the ones I worry about the most in all this.
Now turn to the person next to you, even if they’re a complete stranger, and ask if they’re coping with this shameful, gut-wrenching news that the Australian cricket team plotted to alter the state of the ball in the third Test against South Africa in Cape Town.
If anyone feels the need to take a mental health day, please do. I’m sure the boss won’t mind. Hell, take the week …
That glow on the horizon is the angry mob, pitchforks and torches in hand, and they’re coming for Steve Smith and the Australian team. A hashtag campaign is sure to break out at any minute.
It’s quite clear from the deepening fallout to the #yellowtapescandal (it’s the best I could come up with at short notice) that our national side garners very little respect from the rest of the cricketing world, which is dancing merrily on the grave of Australian cricket. The Barmy Army has material for the next decade.
It’s also quite clear that our national side isn’t particularly respected by its own supporters. There’s winning and then there’s a certain way to win. This team for some years has gone about its business like a schoolyard bully, setting imaginary “lines” of sportsmanship and morality that it bends to suit itself.
The death of Phillip Hughes was supposed to make a hard, combative and often dangerous sport just a little softer. It has not.
If we’re being truthful, former keeper-batsman Adam Gilchirst tried to show us the right path as far back as the 2003 World Cup semi-final against Sri Lanka when he was given not out despite getting a thick bottom edge on a delivery from Aravinda de Silva.
“The voice in my head was emphatic,” Gilchrist wrote in his biography released later that year. “Go. Walk. And I did … Of course, the guys back in the viewing room were stunned at what I'd done. Flabbergasted, really, that I'd do it in a World Cup semi. While I sat there, I kept going back to the fact that, well, at the end of the day, I had been honest with myself. I felt it was time that players made a stand to take back responsibility for the game. I was at ease with that. You did it for the right reasons.”
Cricket rightly holds a special place in our national conscience, from Bradman and Bodyline to the thousands of little tackers wanting a David Warner Kaboom bat off Santa.
More broadly, this column has seen first-hand the significance of sport. If not for cricket or footy or basketball or whatever, a wayward teenager from a disadvantaged socioeconomic background could easily be leading a life of a needle in his or her arm.
Sport can be that important.
But, most times, in the big old Test match of life, it is not. The collective outrage since Smith’s extraordinary post-match confession has been staggering.
Comparisons have been made to the late Hansie Cronje fixing matches. One commentator likened Smith to doped-up cyclist Lance Armstrong. Another to disgraced sprinter Ben Johnson.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was particularly outraged: “I have to say the whole nation who holds those who wear the baggy green up on a pedestal — about as high as you can get in Australia, higher than any politician that’s for sure — this is a shocking disappointment and it’s wrong and I look forward to Cricket Australia taking decisive action soon.”
Politicians taking the moral high ground? A more pressing matter for the Prime Minister might be why he’s less respected than our cricket captain.
I’ll tell you the people who aren’t picking up pitchforks and torches, joining an angry mob wanting baggy green blood.
It’s the many pub and grade and Sheffield Shield and even international cricketers who are more than aware of cricket’s dirty little secret: players often try to manipulate the ball to make it do things it wouldn’t normally do.
What about this admission from England opener Marcus Trescothick in his autobiography, about using mints to shine up the ball: “For the first time, as I dived to gather the ball at square-leg, I landed on my side and a shower of Murray Mints spewed out of my trouser pocket all over the grass right in front of the umpire. Fortunately, neither he nor the two batsmen seemed to take much notice as I scrambled around on all fours trying desperately to gather in the sweets before they started asking awkward questions.”
Former England captain Mike Atherton wrote in the Times that this incident shows a deep "hypocrisy" on Australia's behalf because they have presented themselves “as arbiters of what is appropriate and proper conduct”.
Atherton has only made fleeting reference to the day at Lord’s in 1994 when he used dirt to work on one side of the ball in a similar way Cameron Bancroft did against South Africa.
“Slightly different smell,” he said in an interview on Sky Sports. Evidently, cheating has an array of odours.
In grade cricket, in which matches are played over consecutive Saturdays and balls are kept with the bowling team, stories abound about Kookaburras being kept in the freezer for two days; about one side of the ball being so shiny the umpire could see his own reflection in it; about Blistex and beer bottle tops being stealthily used to gain an advantage.
While Smith and his “leadership group” may have plotted to cheat, while they may have unfairly deployed Bancroft to do the job and then cruelly plopped him in the firing line at the post-match media confessional, at its most basic level they have done what many others, at all levels, have done before.
If anything, it shines a light on the bowlers' losing battle against batsmen with fat bats with larger sweet spots, playing on benign wickets.
Of course, it doesn’t make any of this right. It doesn’t justify the clandestine manner in which the plan was hatched and it doesn’t diminish the harm that’s been done to this ancient game.
Smith may never captain his country again, nor should he. Warner has long coveted the position but has likely blown his chance.
But let's take a deep breath. Australian cricket will be OK. This is a perfect chance for the game to reset and take the path Gilchrist suggested.
The game will go on. I just hope that you can stay strong and find a way to go on, too.
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