As you can imagine, this ball tampering is a massive story here. In fairness no one is holding back, Fox Sports has rolling coverage and both ex-players and cricket writers are lining up to denounce the actions, players and culture of their side, there is palpable outrage.
Australia as a nation is less than 120 years old, the Australian Cricket team stands for way more to your average Australian than the England team means to the average Englishmen, it's almost the embodiment of the nation.
To be caught wilfully cheating and to find out that it was pre-meditated, discussed and then agreed upon is staggering. Clearly Bancroft has accepted and confessed to the role as cheat mule but you can also expect Smith, Warner and Lehmann to all lose their jobs over this. I'd also say Lyon, Hazelwood and Starc are in the shit too as thats the 'leadership group'.
Interesting that Smith said in his press conference about it being a 'leadership group' decision and then wanting to take "take control of the ship" and that even if they'd not been caught he'd have felt ''Incredibly bad about it''. My hunch is that he's a Captain under huge pressure who has been coerced into taking a stupid course of action by his lieutenants which will now live with him for years.
