​After All The Tears, Let's Not Give In To The Gloom

There were so many flood warnings over Easter I thought for a moment the Australian cricket team must have popped over for a Press conference. As the most health and safety obsessed nation on the planet, all future gatherings will require the assembled media to be issued with galoshes, raincoats and umbrellas before they’re even allowed to enter the room.

- Martin Johnson

Rarely has there have been so much hysteria generated over something so trivial. The equivalent of the judge calling for the black cap over a double yellow line parking offence. However, as always in these matters, it was the cover up rather than the original crime which has caused all the wailing and self flagellation.

One day, if anyone really cares, we’ll find out whether the cock-up included coming away from Screwfix with the wrong kind of sandpaper (clearly, given the fact that the umpires couldn’t find any reason to change the ball, they ended up with the superfine grade rather than industrial coarse) and also, who was behind it all.

According to the captain it was the “leadership group”, and when he revealed that this dressing room brains trust actually referred to just him and David Warner, it re-established my belief in all things unbelievable. Including Santa Claus and the tooth fairy.

Why would you refer to two people as a “leadership group?” This Sunday lunchtime, when families sit down to lunch, will fathers be heard to say to their children: “As the leadership group of this household, your mother and I require you to eat up your vegetables.”

Ah well. The one piece of good news to come out of all this is that the world, or the cricketing world at any rate, is a better place for it. Collectively, this Australian cricket team has been such a grubby, mean, unscrupulous, and unloveable outfit you wouldn’t want to handle them with a pair of tongs, but after Sandpapergate they may at last have been humbled into playing the game the right way.