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Cricketer Steve Smith’s dad has his corner: ‘My son’s no cheat’

Mar 30, 2018

A distraught Steve Smith spoke at a press conference on Thursday night. Source: Getty

Steve Smith’s heartbroken father Peter has spoken out over the vilification his son’s received in the wake of the ball-tampering scandal, telling the Daily Telegraph that “my son is not a cheat”.

Speaking exclusively to the newspaper, Peter acknowledged that Steve, the Australian cricket captain, made a grave error of judgement but that he wasn’t involved in the actual planning or implementation of the ball tampering.

“He admitted he did direct, yes, but he didn’t cheat. He’s very emotional, it’s an emotional time for all of them,” Peter said to the newspaper, adding that his son had received an unfair level of abuse from cricket fans over his actions, which many have said had brought the name of Australia as a sporting nation into disrepute.

Player Cameron Bancroft was caught on Saturday in South Africa attempting to alter the condition of the cricket ball by rubbing one side of it with sandpaper he had hidden in his trousers. An investigation by Cricket Australia found that just three people – Bancroft, Smith and vice-captain David Warner – knew of the plan, and that Warner had been the driving force behind it.

So far, the cricketing body has sent home all three from South Africa in disgrace and handed Smith and Warner 12-month bans from international cricket. Bancroft was given a nine-month ban. And on Thursday night, Australian test team coach Darren Lehmann said he would step down at the end of the fourth test against South Africa to allow the team to move forward from the scandal, although he reiterated that, as Cricket Australia’s probe found, he knew nothing of the plan to tamper with the ball.

Steve Smith held an emotional press conference earlier on Thursday night, at which he tearfully apologised to the nation and to his family, saying that his mother and father were devastated by his actions and the furore they had caused. Smith has reportedly since flown from Australia to Dubai with his father Peter.

The three players faced a gauntlet of media cameras and angry fans when they landed in Sydney airport after flying home from South Africa on Thursday after several days of headlines about the embarrassment they had caused their country, and Lehmann said his family had been subjected to abuse over the scandal.

The players’ actions breached article 2.3.5 of Cricket Australia’s code of conduct because they were contrary to the spirit of the game and brought the game into disrepute, but Cricket Australia CEO James Sutherland declined to categorise the ball-tampering as cheating when pressed on the matter on Wednesday.

Ball tampering reportedly isn’t uncommon at all levels of competitive cricket – roughing-up one side of the ball or making the other more slick are ways of making it ‘swing’ in the air when bowled and thus harder for the opposing side to bat against. South Africa’s current test cricket captain, for example, has twice been charged with ball tampering, on one occasion for rubbing it against the zip of his trousers and on another for shining it with a mint.

But Australia’s pride in being a ‘clean’ and sportsmanlike nation has meant that the trio’s behaviour has captured world headlines, with even publications such as The Economist taking an interest in the scandal. So heavy has been the interest in the scandal that Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said she had been approached for foreign ministers from other nations keep to discuss it with her – and she did not shy away from labelling it “cheating”.

“Australia is seen as a country that plays fair, that plays by the rules [and] abides by the rules,” she said this week. “Any attempt to gain an unfair advantage … essentially cheating, is a surprise. I think people were taken aback.”