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Inside 'sandpapergate' – cricket's greatest scandal · The Morning Edition

0:04
S1: Australians woke up on a Sunday morning in 2018 to
0:08
S1: extraordinary vision plastered across their television screens and mobile phones.
0:13
S1: Cameron Bancroft, the opening batsman on the Australian men's cricket team,
0:17
S1: caught on camera using a piece of sandpaper to tamper
0:20
S1: with the ball during a test match in Cape Town.
0:24
S1: It was one of the most brazen acts of cheating
0:27
S1: ever broadcast.
0:28
S2: Well, Australia is waking up to a major developing story
0:31
S2: in the cricketing world. Captain Steve Smith has admitted his
0:35
S2: team deliberately conspired to cheat.
0:38
S3: The blackest of days for Australian cricket. A piece of
0:41
S3: yellow tape and batsman Cameron Bancroft is caught red handed
0:47
S3: this week.
0:47
S1: The Australian team returns to South Africa for their first
0:50
S1: test series in the country since that scandal, which remains
0:54
S1: one of Australian sports darkest moments. I'm Samantha Cylindromas and
1:00
S1: you're listening to The Morning Edition from The Age and
1:02
S1: The Sydney Morning Herald today. Senior sports reporter Chris Barrett
1:07
S1: and chief cricket writer Daniel Bretag, recording from South Africa
1:11
S1: on the so-called arms race of ball tampering that preceded
1:15
S1: the 2018 test, and how South Africans might respond when
1:19
S1: the captain from that 2018 team walks out onto the
1:23
S1: ground on Friday. Welcome, Daniel and Chris to the podcast.
1:31
S4: Thanks for having me.
1:32
S5: Good to be here.
1:33
S1: Now, Dan, before we get into the scandal in detail,
1:35
S1: can you just tell us about the reputation of the
1:37
S1: Australian cricket team at the time and presumably the reputation
1:41
S1: it had for decades prior to this particular series in
1:44
S1: South Africa, just to help us understand what a shock
1:47
S1: this scandal was.
1:49
S5: So the Australian cricket team has a pretty unique place
1:52
S5: in Australian life. There was an Australian cricket team before
1:55
S5: there was a federated Australia by a good 20 years.
1:58
S5: So it's very deeply part of who we are. And
2:02
S5: so when the Sandpapergate scandal happened, the Australian public got
2:07
S5: a real shock in terms of this isn't what we
2:09
S5: thought the Australian cricket team was. We thought that they
2:12
S5: were hard, yes, and that they pushed the boundaries at times,
2:17
S5: but we thought that they were fair players and this
2:20
S5: was not fair play. This was egregiously sharp practice or cheating, obviously,
2:25
S5: and that caused huge reverberations around the country and really
2:31
S5: left Cricket Australia with an enormous kind of firestorm to
2:35
S5: deal with in terms of the game's reputation in Australia.
2:38
S5: And that firestorm resulted in these huge penalties that were
2:43
S5: ultimately applied to Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft.
2:48
S5: And that contributed, I think, as well to some of
2:51
S5: the secrets that have lingered about the whole affair. And
2:55
S5: so that is part of why we're still talking about
2:58
S5: it now.
2:59
S6: And Chris and Dan, both of you.
3:00
S1: Were in South Africa at the time covering the test series,
3:03
S1: and I was hoping you could take us back there
3:05
S1: and talk us through, I guess, the tensions that were
3:07
S1: beginning to build in the lead up to this now
3:10
S1: infamous incident, which has been dubbed the biggest scandal in
3:13
S1: Australian sporting history. Because, Chris, I'm going to go to you.
3:17
S1: You've written that this series was, quote, radioactive from the start.
3:20
S1: So why was that? What was happening?
3:23
S4: Well, look, whenever people ask me about reporting on the
3:25
S4: series and I'm sure Dan gets asked about it all
3:27
S4: the time. Yeah, I always say that it was off
3:29
S4: the chain like weeks before before Cape Town and everything
3:33
S4: that all the all those events, I guess have been
3:35
S4: rendered footnotes to the to the ball tampering incident itself.
3:39
S4: There was animosity from the outset between the teams. I mean,
3:42
S4: I think they there was a general distrust between these
3:44
S4: two teams anyway. They were very hostile competitors. But certainly
3:49
S4: in the first test match it got going, you know,
3:51
S4: right from the outset, like there was on field tension
3:54
S4: between players, you know, sledging allegations about comments made about
3:59
S4: family members. The Australian team had applied to have the
4:02
S4: stump microphones turned down, which is a you know, the
4:05
S4: inference being they don't want what they're saying to the
4:07
S4: opposition on the field to be heard by the viewing public.
4:09
S4: And it got so, I guess, out of control or
4:13
S4: such a level that the Cricket Australia CEO of the time,
4:15
S4: James Sutherland, had called the captain, Steve Smith, after the
4:18
S4: first test match and basically said said to him, you know,
4:21
S4: can you get things in line? And of course they didn't. Um,
4:25
S4: a couple of test matches later it all blew up.
4:27
S4: But I think beyond all that also was this suspicion
4:31
S4: about how the teams were getting the ball to move
4:34
S4: so dramatically and reverse swing, you know, reverse swing. We
4:38
S4: could do a whole podcast on reverse swing, but I'm
4:39
S4: not sure you get as many listeners, but, uh, reverse
4:42
S4: swing essentially makes it harder to bat. And the teams
4:45
S4: were getting the ball to reverse swing egregiously from the outset. And,
4:50
S4: you know, there are ways to get the ball to
4:52
S4: reverse swing without without underhanded tactics, but usually it involves
4:56
S4: some sort of scuffing of the ball. And of course,
4:58
S4: that's where these foreign objects come in, where we got
5:00
S4: to with sandpaper.
5:01
S1: And the reverse swing. Essentially, it's when the bowler bowling
5:04
S1: the ball instead of bowling it so that it goes
5:06
S1: in a convex arc outwards towards the batsman. Essentially, the
5:10
S1: ball goes concave, right? It's sort of turning inwards towards
5:13
S1: the batsman. Is that it?
5:14
S4: Yeah. And it's moving light as well you know. And
5:16
S4: that's the that's the difficulty for batsmen. And of course
5:20
S4: you know people will say that you can get reverse
5:22
S4: swing you know just through natural attrition of the ball.
5:24
S4: But you know, over the years it was kind of
5:28
S4: a dirty secret or this thing that was going on
5:31
S4: in the background of cricket where, where players, you know,
5:33
S4: would would use different kind of strategies to get reverse swing. Now,
5:37
S4: South Africa had a, I guess, a far more relaxed
5:39
S4: attitude about things than than Australia did. Their own captain
5:42
S4: had been sprung twice for ball tampering, once in Australia
5:45
S4: for using a mint, and once in Pakistan for using
5:48
S4: the zipper on his pants. So they've always had a
5:52
S4: bit more of a carefree outlook on this whole episode
5:55
S4: and ball tampering in general.
5:56
S1: Okay, interesting. And then, Chris, I'm just going to stick
5:58
S1: with you for a moment because you wrote that cameras
6:01
S1: were following the Australian vice captain, David Warner, because there
6:04
S1: was suspicions again, like you say, that ball tampering was
6:07
S1: perhaps occurring on both sides, which did sort of surprise
6:10
S1: me a bit. But was that surprising given how well
6:13
S1: regarded the Australian cricket team was, that there was this
6:16
S1: reputation that was developing, perhaps for the Australian team and
6:19
S1: other teams that, well, this is just what happened was
6:22
S1: ball tampering. It was just par for the course.
6:23
S4: Well, I mean, they had I think the broadcast guy
6:26
S4: from South Africa said they had like 30 cameras on
6:28
S4: the team. And so their view is that they weren't
6:31
S4: following particular players. But Warner had a bandage on his hand.
6:34
S4: He'd had finger and thumb issues and that over the years.
6:37
S4: And so that created more distrust. I don't necessarily think
6:40
S4: it was because Australia's image was being unfurled, but it
6:43
S4: was more or less that there was just so much
6:46
S4: movement of the ball that people thought there must be
6:49
S4: something going on right now. David Warner at that time,
6:52
S4: you know, wasn't in a great headspace either because his
6:55
S4: wife had been abused from crowd members. You know, South
6:59
S4: African officials had even posed with masks that were, you know,
7:03
S4: in a way to, to, um, disparage her.
7:06
S1: So let's just paint a picture for the listeners here.
7:08
S1: So South African officials wearing masks with Sonny Bill Williams face,
7:12
S1: and he was a sports player with whom she had
7:14
S1: had a dalliance years before she married David Warner. Right.
7:17
S1: So I think that's something that sort of kicked off
7:19
S1: the tensions, right? Like he had felt that his wife
7:22
S1: was being sledged. She was in the stands with her
7:24
S1: brother and their two children. And I think there was
7:27
S1: a sort of feeling that this kind of went beyond
7:29
S1: the normal sledging. Is that right?
7:30
S4: Oh, look, Fabian, it was disgraceful. And I think I
7:33
S4: think in many ways, looking back on it, I mean
7:35
S4: I think I don't think he can blame that David Warner.
7:37
S4: But I think that that certainly set things over the
7:41
S4: edge in a way, because it wasn't just that these
7:43
S4: things were going on and seemingly sanctioned by guys who
7:47
S4: work for Cricket South Africa in senior roles, but also
7:51
S4: a sense of injustice, I guess, was building, rightly or wrongly,
7:54
S4: from the Australians, that the officials on the ground were
7:57
S4: doing nothing about anything. And, you know, and that built
7:59
S4: and built and look, that built and built into terrible
8:02
S4: mistakes that were made in Cape Town. But I definitely
8:05
S4: think those things were factors that mattered in the end.
8:08
S1: Okay, so all this tension is building up. And Dan,
8:11
S1: I'm going to turn to you now because as we've
8:13
S1: been discussing, there was heaps of cameras focused on the players, right?
8:16
S1: Many of them were focused on vice captain David Warner,
8:19
S1: but it was actually opening batsman Cameron Bancroft, who, of
8:23
S1: course inevitably was captured in this infamous vision. That, of course,
8:27
S1: ripped the lid off this scandal. So just walk us
8:29
S1: through how did this play out?
8:31
S5: So in the press box that day, our understanding of
8:34
S5: it grew similarly to to the crowd really. And a
8:38
S5: lot of it turned on the footage of Cameron Bancroft
8:41
S5: with something. And you could see like little snippets of,
8:44
S5: you know, something yellow that, you know, didn't look like
8:47
S5: anything he should be holding in close proximity to the
8:49
S5: ball on the big screen. And it was the replays
8:53
S5: on the big screen, which were then amplified by being
8:56
S5: on the broadcast that really brought it home and had
8:59
S5: the Australian players scurrying around and Australian coach Darren Lehmann
9:03
S5: on the on the walkie talkie trying to figure out
9:05
S5: what was going on. And then ultimately the umpires confronting
9:08
S5: Cameron Bancroft.
9:11
S7: So this is the umpires are having a chat to
9:15
S7: Cameron Bancroft. I think they're asking him about what he
9:21
S7: had in his pocket.
9:23
S5: Who initially obfuscated by indicating that it wasn't, you know,
9:28
S5: wasn't what it looked like. And then, you know, hiding
9:31
S5: what was ultimately the sandpaper in his in his jocks.
9:35
S7: I'm going to come out and say it. In my opinion,
9:37
S7: I think he's tampered with the ball and used an
9:40
S7: object to do that. I think the footage is quite obvious,
9:47
S7: and the fact.
9:47
S5: That they'd been caught red handed and it was so obvious,
9:52
S5: and then they were trying to escape it or get
9:55
S5: away with it or cover it up, uh, which was
9:57
S5: then further exacerbated by the press conference after play where
10:00
S5: Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft came in front of the
10:03
S5: cameras and they admitted essentially to cheating.
10:08
S8: Yeah. I've been charged with attempting to, uh, to change
10:12
S8: the condition of the ball. Yeah. Look, we had a yeah,
10:17
S8: a discussion during the break.
10:18
S9: Yeah. The the leadership group knew about it. Um, we
10:22
S9: spoke about it at lunch and, uh, I'm not proud of,
10:27
S9: of what's happened. Um, you know, it's not within the
10:31
S9: spirit of the game. Um, my integrity, the team's integrity,
10:35
S9: the leadership group.
10:36
S5: But they also lied that it wasn't sandpaper, that it
10:40
S5: was yellow tape. And they were trying to get granules
10:43
S5: of dirt on it, which was just a weird additional
10:47
S5: lie on top of the lie kind of thing. And yeah,
10:49
S5: I think the mere fact that Smith and Bancroft came
10:52
S5: and spoke, which was a matter of a lot of
10:54
S5: debate within the Australian dressing room before it actually happened,
10:58
S5: that was a strong indicator that the Australian team and
11:01
S5: its leaders at the time didn't understand how bad this
11:05
S5: was and how big this was going to be. And
11:08
S5: players that we've spoken to have subsequently said, yeah, look,
11:11
S5: we thought it was bad, but we had no idea
11:14
S5: how bad it was until we woke up the following
11:16
S5: morning and looked at our phones and saw the scale
11:20
S5: of the reaction.
11:24
S1: After the break.
11:25
S5: I expect that there'll be some who want to stir
11:29
S5: it up. You know, in the crowds, as there have
11:31
S5: always been in South Africa, there's always been rowdy and
11:35
S5: let's say well oiled members of the crowd over here
11:37
S5: who want to be provocative.
11:45
S6: Okay, so I have to ask you.
11:46
S1: Though, I have to interject and say, were they just delusional?
11:50
S1: Like if they were caught red handed on this massive screens,
11:54
S1: stuffing sandpaper down his underwear to try to obscure what
11:58
S1: he had done. So just caught openly cheating in the most,
12:02
S1: you know, obvious of ways. Did they just think it
12:05
S1: was going to blow over? Because that sounds crazy.
12:07
S5: The Australian team and its players have come to terms
12:11
S5: over the years since, and probably not long after that event,
12:14
S5: to be honest with the idea that they'd gotten caught
12:17
S5: up in their own bubble and they had lost perspective
12:20
S5: on what was important in certainly in terms of fair
12:24
S5: play and what was not important, which was, you know,
12:27
S5: the thing that was central in their minds at that
12:29
S5: point was like, we've got to beat South Africa and
12:31
S5: we've got to find ways to beat South Africa, because otherwise,
12:34
S5: you know, all our jobs are on the line. That
12:35
S5: was the kind of bubble that they got themselves into.
12:39
S5: And so all of the things about, as I mentioned,
12:42
S5: fair play, the idea that you're not just trying to
12:46
S5: beat an opponent, you're a team of players who are
12:49
S5: watched by millions of followers. You're watched by families. You're
12:54
S5: watched by kids, parents who want an example set for
12:58
S5: their kids. All of that had gone out the window.
13:01
S5: And so it was a real shock to the Australian
13:05
S5: system and the guys who were currently in South Africa
13:08
S5: who were on the 2018 tour. You know, that's a
13:10
S5: that's a lesson that I don't think any of them
13:12
S5: have forgotten. And I actually spoke to a couple of
13:15
S5: those players today. And yeah, we actually talked about the
13:19
S5: idea that, you know, never forget that this is a game.
13:22
S5: Never forget that it's not federal politics. It's not the UN.
13:27
S5: It's not something where if you lose, it's, yes, you
13:31
S5: want to win, but it's not the disaster that they
13:33
S5: thought it might have been in 2018.
13:35
S1: Interesting. And of course, you've both mentioned there these really
13:38
S1: dramatic press conferences that that, you know, were subsequent to
13:42
S1: the actual scandal itself erupting. So, Chris, I want to
13:44
S1: turn to you and ask you, I guess, which of
13:46
S1: those moments of those press conferences perhaps still stick with
13:49
S1: you and talk us through the bands that were handed down?
13:52
S1: Because many of us, even myself, remember Australian captain Steve
13:56
S1: Smith just breaking down during his press conference, and he
14:00
S1: said in an interview just the other day that even today,
14:02
S1: when he hears the flash of a camera, he revisits
14:05
S1: what he calls a traumatic experience in his life. So, Chris,
14:08
S1: walk us through that a bit.
14:09
S4: Well, I mean, I think we remember those particular press
14:11
S4: conferences by the three players in Australia. We watched them
14:14
S4: on our phones or on our computers in South Africa.
14:16
S4: We were.
14:16
S8: Still.
14:17
S4: You.
14:17
S8: Know.
14:17
S4: We were in Johannesburg.
14:18
S8: At.
14:18
S4: That time. I mean, I remember.
14:20
S8: Once I was decided.
14:21
S4: Being in the hotel lobby of the hotel in Johannesburg and,
14:25
S4: and Steve Smith, you know, moments or seemingly moments after
14:28
S4: the sanctions were handed down and I'll get to what
14:31
S4: they were in the lobby, in the breakfast room, just
14:34
S4: hugging a few teammates. We had hugged the journalist as well.
14:37
S4: And then that's how crazy things were at the time.
14:40
S4: And and then, you know, walking out, wheeling the suitcase out,
14:44
S4: getting in a cab and and he was off. And
14:46
S4: I suppose I also remember the chaotic scenes. And I
14:48
S4: wasn't there at the Johannesburg airport where he was just
14:52
S4: surrounded by photographers and other members of the public. And
14:55
S4: he had security with him. And yeah, I can imagine
14:58
S4: that would have been pretty traumatic for him. I think
15:00
S4: there was even a journalist flying out from Australia and
15:03
S4: put on the plane back with him to try and
15:05
S4: talk with him on the plane like a television journalist.
15:07
S1: There was images of him being escorted by police officers
15:10
S1: as he left Johannesburg. I mean, it was pretty. Yeah.
15:12
S4: So to circle back to the suspension. So yes. So
15:15
S4: Steve Smith and David Warner were both suspended for 12
15:19
S4: months and Cameron Bancroft got nine months. Now they were
15:22
S4: very big suspensions. And you know in the years later
15:26
S4: they seem big. I guess even even now it seems
15:29
S4: heavy handed because if you look at the way ball
15:32
S4: tampering was treated by cricket, it was like a speeding offence.
15:35
S4: You know, it was either a few thousand dollars fine,
15:38
S4: you'd get fined your match fee, which was a few
15:39
S4: thousand dollars for most countries, or you'd get a couple
15:41
S4: of games banned. So. So that goes some way to
15:44
S4: explaining why the players also didn't understand the gravity of
15:47
S4: it at the time, although they perhaps should have. But,
15:51
S4: you know, obviously there was differences here, you know, as
15:54
S4: Dan's talked to, the reason why it was so large,
15:57
S4: I guess, was, you know, this this incident almost broke
16:02
S4: with an agreement the team had with the Australian public
16:05
S4: in a way. And the outrage was was just enormous,
16:09
S4: led by the Prime Minister at the time, Malcolm Turnbull.
16:11
S10: I have to say that the whole nation who holds
16:16
S10: those who wear the baggy green up on a pedestal
16:20
S10: about as high as you can get in Australia, certainly
16:23
S10: higher than any politician, that's for sure. This is a
16:27
S10: shocking disappointment, and it's wrong. And I look forward to
16:33
S10: Cricket Australia taking decisive action soon. It honestly seems beyond
16:39
S10: belief and I have to say, knowing a number of
16:42
S10: the players, including the captain, quite out of character, but
16:46
S10: it's it's been admitted.
16:48
S4: But also their deceit as well, right? Like the fact
16:50
S4: that they weren't completely upfront with it at the time.
16:53
S4: And just the, I think the brazenness of it, like
16:55
S4: having a piece of sandpaper on the field. I mean,
16:58
S4: we've reported about other ways that ball tampering was done
17:01
S4: over the years. I'm not saying it's any better, but
17:04
S4: it was done in a little bit more of a
17:05
S4: subtle way. Like as you were coming onto the field,
17:08
S4: maybe when the umpire drops the ball near the boundary
17:10
S4: and you know, something's rubbed on the ball quickly and
17:12
S4: then whisked off. But this was just so in-your-face that
17:16
S4: I guess that's why the cricket authorities were compelled to
17:19
S4: come down so heavily on them as they did.
17:21
S6: And Chris, just quickly.
17:22
S1: I mean, what role did Captain Steve Smith and vice
17:25
S1: captain David Warner, what roles did they actually play in
17:27
S1: the scandal? Obviously, we know Cameron Bancroft did the actual sandpapering,
17:30
S1: but what roles do those two men play?
17:33
S4: Well, according to the official account, like David Warner was
17:36
S4: the one who suggested it to, um, to Cameron Bancroft.
17:39
S4: And I mean, David had been the, the so-called ball
17:42
S4: manager for the Australian team, like the guy tasked with
17:44
S4: shining the ball. It usually just goes to one one
17:47
S4: or maybe 1 or 2 guys in a team because it's,
17:49
S4: it's kind of a delicate task. You don't want to
17:51
S4: get it wrong or the ball won't work in the
17:53
S4: way you want it to. And Smith was was the
17:56
S4: captain and he admitted knowledge of a discussion or almost
18:00
S4: like a you know, I don't want to know. I
18:01
S4: don't want to know what's going on here, Sort of.
18:03
S4: Sort of thing. I mean, in terms of wider responsibility,
18:06
S4: that's still contested. There's still an argument made by plenty
18:09
S4: that the full team or full squad should have, I guess,
18:12
S4: taken the hit together because they were all trying to
18:16
S4: get an advantage with the ball. Whether they knew about
18:19
S4: the actual sandpaper or not is a different story. So
18:22
S4: in terms of like collective accountability, that is an ongoing
18:25
S4: discussion many years later that there still probably hasn't been
18:28
S4: resolved by everyone who was in South Africa that year.
18:31
S6: And Dan, I just want to turn to you because this.
18:33
S1: Wasn't the end, of course, of Australian cricket or the
18:36
S1: players careers, those who were involved in this, they did,
18:39
S1: of course, pay a heavy price for their mistakes as
18:41
S1: Chris has just walked us through. But Steve Smith, the
18:44
S1: former captain from that time, he is still in the team.
18:47
S1: He's been a captain again. He's going to be in
18:50
S1: the lineup against South Africa in Durban this week for
18:53
S1: Australia's first test in the country in eight years. So Dan,
18:56
S1: you are there. What is it like over there and
18:59
S1: what are your reflections on the fact that Steve Smith
19:02
S1: is playing for the team. And what sort of reception
19:04
S1: do you think that he and the whole team are
19:07
S1: going to receive from the locals there?
19:08
S5: Yeah, I expect that there'll be some who want to
19:12
S5: stir it up in the, you know, in the crowds,
19:15
S5: as there have always been in South Africa. There's always
19:18
S5: been rowdy and let's say well oiled members of the
19:21
S5: crowd over here who want to be provocative. But I
19:25
S5: also think that the the peak of the kind of
19:28
S5: abuse and the and the sledging and the and the
19:31
S5: hostility from crowds that Australia got after that has already
19:34
S5: been seen. I think we saw it in England in
19:37
S5: 2019 and in 2023 on those two ashes tours and
19:41
S5: Australia's response to kind of, I guess, stoically walk through
19:46
S5: those storms and, and not really bite back or retaliate
19:50
S5: or anything like that. And, and just stick to trying
19:52
S5: to play well on the field. That I think has
19:55
S5: taken quite a bit of the oxygen out of it
19:57
S5: in terms of Australia coming back to South Africa. And
20:00
S5: Steve Smith, it's a really interesting question in terms of
20:03
S5: how he's going to go in this series, because he's
20:06
S5: been playing for Australia. On what he calls a series
20:09
S5: by series basis for about the last three years, to
20:12
S5: the point that Australia have two vice captains under Pat Cummins,
20:15
S5: Steve Smith and Travis Head, and Travis Head is there
20:17
S5: essentially in case Steve Smith decides to retire at any moment.
20:21
S5: So it has felt a bit like Steve does want
20:24
S5: to come back here and try to do a version
20:28
S5: of what he did in England in 2019, which was
20:30
S5: make a comeback of sorts, perform really well, achieve something
20:34
S5: in a in a series away from home. And yeah,
20:38
S5: I think the South Africans here, I think there's more
20:40
S5: sympathy for Steve and his story than you might get
20:44
S5: in England, because as we've said earlier on the podcast, yeah,
20:48
S5: the South Africans were a little bit like they. Yeah.
20:52
S5: They were surprised at the scale of the, of the,
20:55
S5: of the blowback and the scale of the way that
20:57
S5: the team and the players were penalized for it. They
20:59
S5: didn't expect it to, to get anywhere near as big
21:02
S5: as that. And some of them are still sort of,
21:03
S5: you know, you ask them, they just have a bit
21:06
S5: of a look of puzzlement that crosses their face. They're
21:07
S5: just like everyone was doing it.
21:09
S1: Wow, that is fascinating. And Chris, just to wrap up,
21:12
S1: I mean, ultimately, what lasting damage do you think this
21:15
S1: scandal has actually done to Australian cricket?
21:18
S4: Well, it's made it harder to get this ball to
21:20
S4: reverse swing, I suppose. Um uh, you can't get away
21:23
S4: with it as much, but that's what it's done. That
21:25
S4: was an impact on the broader game of world cricket immediately.
21:28
S4: I mean and that made things look pretty obvious, right?
21:31
S4: There was barely any reverse swing noticed in test cricket
21:35
S4: in the years after this. So that told its own story. Look,
21:38
S4: I don't know if it's I think I think Australian
21:40
S4: cricket has recovered in that sense. It went through a
21:44
S4: period of self-reflection. There was reports done about culture. You know,
21:50
S4: as Dan spoke to earlier, there'd been a report done
21:52
S4: that identified a win at all costs culture which seeped
21:56
S4: through the whole organisation and down to the, I guess,
21:59
S4: the men's national team itself. You know, I think in
22:03
S4: some ways, the moment that Steve Smith made those twin
22:07
S4: hundreds in England the year after things started to recover,
22:11
S4: I suppose, you know, I would say that people look
22:13
S4: back maybe and don't and don't necessarily hold it against
22:16
S4: the Australian team for what happened eight years ago. You know,
22:19
S4: I would say that there's not long lasting reputational damage
22:22
S4: out of that. No.
22:27
S1: Well, it's a fascinating topic, of course. So thank you
22:30
S1: so much, Dan and Chris, for your time.
22:32
S4: Great to be with you.
22:33
S5: Thanks very much.
22:48
S1: In other news, today, an online database that connects people
22:52
S1: in crisis with local support services that has been used
22:55
S1: millions of times by vulnerable Australians, faces an uncertain future
22:59
S1: after the Albanese government pulled its funding, prompting a campaign
23:03
S1: by the nation's biggest social service organizations for the money
23:07
S1: to be restored. Households will face recession like conditions next year,
23:12
S1: according to a leading forecaster, with fresh evidence that shows
23:15
S1: consumers are losing confidence in the economy amid growing cost
23:19
S1: of living pressures. And the Kremlin is urging people to
23:23
S1: ignore rumours after a Russian woman died from suspected plague
23:27
S1: after a lab accident. Concrete information is difficult to find, though,
23:31
S1: with state aligned Russian media and regional authorities editing or
23:35
S1: deleting conflicting reports. You can read more at the age.com.au
23:40
S1: or smh.com.au. Today's episode was produced by Josh towers. Our
23:46
S1: executive producer is Tammy Mills, and our podcasts are overseen
23:50
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