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In order of increasing severity, points against NL as interim captain: he's a bowler; he may be distracted by the ongoing tabloid fodder on his personal life; he has no captaincy experience; he's recently become a bit combative verbally (not a big deal, but in the current climate...); he's just been fined for silly behaviour (ABCDV); a few days ago (and maybe even now) they did not know for sure that, as a person in the 'leadership group', he was unstained by this affair.
Quite frankly, when you consider the options, it's fortunate there was Tim Paine there. Otherwise, the radical option of simply being captain-less would have made sense. (Easier as a mid-match option than for the whole Test, when there's the symbolic issue of the coin toss --- perhaps in that scenario, it'd be best to send no one out and tell Faf he has to call, provided he hasn't choked on his minties.)
Going by Reporters around the World the Aussie Cricket Team is Getting what they Deserve and are the Most Hated International Cricket Team around the World
^^^
Our guys may indeed be the most hated team, but it's delusional for those journalists (and others) to pretend that they are worse than other cricket teams. They are definitely not, and may actually be better (i.e. better than a team that not only cheats, but also commits felony, etc.). Until this blind and frenzied nationalism is at least partially controlled, I don't see much hope for cricket's problems to be solved.
I'm not sure that this sorry state could have been predicted even as recently as two or three decades ago. Back then, for example, it was standard for a commentary box to have a commentator from each of the competing countries. (Still is.) Etiquette then dictated that the fiercest criticism, in fact anything more than mild criticism (and this only on cricket skill!), was made only by the commentator from the same country. They criticized only their own countrymen! How times have changed. Now, they are obsessed not just with criticizing other countries' players and ignoring the misdemeanours of their own, but with entrapping other countries' players.
Not sure if he's already in the air. Flight number not reported.
An already out-of-date report on cricket.com.au said:
"It's understood preparations had been made for Renshaw to be substituted out of the Shield final, but he will instead fly out of Australia after the match has finished."
With so many former players and (other?) miscreants coming out of nowhere to have their say, it's interesting to run consistency checks on them and their opinions.
Nasser Hussain has apparently had some strong words. (I haven't read or listened to them.) It seems Nasser has passed my quick initial consistency test. I don't recall and haven't seen news reports of any big misdemeanours from his playing days. (Anyone else know anything?) And his Daily Mail column in 2010 has the following headline (suggesting he doesn't just ignore or excuse his countrymen's behaviour):
"If a Pakistani or Indian had done what James Anderson did, we'd say it was cheating."
Michael Vaughan, on the other hand, should just shut up. There are many things he did playing for England that I regard as unethical.
Donny wrote:Interesting that only Renshaw has been called up.
At the moment, it looks like Handscomb in for Smith and Renshaw in for Warner or Bancroft.
Bancroft could yet keep his spot and open with Renshaw, if Warner's part in the whole saga is considered to be worse than his.
As there's still time for other players to be called up, the Oz XI for the next Test could be anything.
The selectors haven't named Renshaw just to be 12th. man, so he's in. Handscomb should be a straight swap with Smith.
Smith mentioned, in his presser, 'the leadership team' and that they'd talked about the subsequent action, so Lyon could be implicated. Starc and/or Hazlewood, as well.
"David Warner and Cricket Australia may be headed the same way as Kevin Pietersen and the ECB, with the vice-captain increasingly isolated as the instigator of the ball-tampering incident that has blown up into a perfect storm.
In reference to the view within the team that Warner had hatched the idea and delegated it to his opening partner Cameron Bancroft with the captain Steven Smith's approval, ESPNcricinfo has been told "the truth is starting to come out". With the CA Board holding a teleconference with the head of integrity Iain Roy and the chief executive James Sutherland following the former's hurried investigation, sources close to the board confirmed Warner "is the issue"."
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... 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."
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A bit more on Michael Vaughan's Ashes-winning cheating:
It's astonishing that people with his history are so vocal now about other people's behaviour. Presumably this indicates that in a couple of decades, we shall have the pleasure of seeing Dave Warner in the media denouncing the alleged cheating of future players who are currently in their nappies. (Again, this assumes that Vaughan et al. have not destroyed the game before then.)