This Was Pre-Meditated Cheating And That Hurts!

​But Craig McDermott tells The Cricket Paper that Australia can repair its reputation after the recent ball-tampering scandal

What are your thoughts on the ball-tampering controversy? 

CM: It has been a difficult time to be involved in the game in Australia. The magnitude of what has happened is still sinking in. The public were outraged because this was pre-meditated cheating. This is what we have all been grappling with; there was a plan to cheat. Yes, something similar has happened 1,000 times before, Faf du Plessis recently and Michael Atherton in the 1990s, but they were in the spur of the moment. But the Australians actually talked about taking sandpaper on to the pitch, which is very different.

Why did they do it? What do you think went through these players’ heads? 

CM: I honestly do not know. Australia have the best bowling attack in the world, so why do they need to resort to this sort of behavior? It is baffling. And why are David Warner and Cameron Bancroft getting involved in a bowling matter?

Is there more pressure to win now in the modern game than when you played in the 1980s and 1990s? 

CM: There has always been pressure to win; I don’t think it is any more now. When I played players looked for ways to gain an advantage too. Some of our opponents would load the ball with sweat on one side, so it was heavy and would swing.

Now the dust has settled, do you think there has been an overreaction to what the Australians did in South Africa? 

CM: No, I don’t, because what they did was pre-meditated cheating. They went out there to do it. It’s very different from being on the ground and trying to gain an advantage, like when you saw a mark on the ball, and you would try to expand it, which has happened since the 1940s and 1950s.