Pandora's box

I have a friend who is gay and from a very traditional family. One day she told her family she was gay and all hell broke loose so she took it back and everything went back to the way it was before. I don’t know how you do ‘take back’ that sort of thing, but the fact that it worked shows just how much some people are happy to know things but need not to be told them - really really desperately need not to be told them. If you do tell them it collapses some membrane between what they know and want to know causing the two liquids to combine and combust.

This is the only way I can explain what is happening here. I felt the shock as much as anyone else when Steve Smith looked us in the eye and said yes, we tried to tamper with the ball, we talked about it at lunch. But when I break down the content of what he is saying I can’t work out why I should be shocked. Ball tampering is common practice. Under ICC codes it is a relatively minor offence. Players of all nations have been caught ball tampering, been shown to ball tamper or admitted ball tampering. Captains of many nations have been caught ball tampering. Shahid Afridi, in some sort of daze, bit into a ball on camera, making no attempt to hide it. We have to assume the incidents we know about are a fraction of what happens, and we do assume that, because ball tampering is common practice and something you are taught about as a schoolboy. We accept ball tampering as part of the game. We accept ball tampering as part of the game.

Shahid Afridi claimed he was trying to smell the ball. Faf du Plessis, captain of the team we are currently playing and filmed a few years ago engaging in sharp practice with a mint, mounted the defence that it isn’t ball tampering if it doesn’t work. It was fantastic. “Can I truly said to have tampered with the ball if my attempt to tamper did not in actual fact alter the condition of the ball?” They pushed poor Hashim Amla out in front of the cameras to say “um no you are.” Complete bullshit and everyone knows it’s bullshit. It’s predictable, laughable bullshit, which we predict, laugh at, and move on.

It seems then that this absurd evasive dance is also part of the game, as much as ball tampering itself. The absurd evasive dance of pretending you haven’t tampered with the ball. Dissimulating when you’re on the field, denying when you’re off it.

“Absurd evasive dance” might seem like a good description of poor Cameron Bancroft putting a bit of tape down his trousers, but there was no dance to it, and that was the problem. It was a good example of why lollies are a better tampering tool. Part of the absurd evasive dance is its elegance, genius, sleight of hand, gaslighting. Bancroft is no Shahid Afridi. Steve Smith made no attempt at absurd evasive dance whatsoever but looked us in the eye and said yes, we tried to tamper with the ball, we talked about it at lunch. He did not play the game. And all hell broke loose.

It seems we need - desperately need - to preserve a part of the universe which is free from the law of non-contradiction, a place where we can know and not know at the same time. Okay. So punish Steve Smith. So long as we are clear on exactly what rule he broke.