While three players were sent home, Lehmann escaped punishment.
On Tuesday night, in a short press conference Cricket Australia announced that David Warner, Cameron Bancroft and Steve Smith will be returning home. 3 replacements were named. The trio, stripped of their positions, will discover the full extent of their punishment in the next "24 hours" with Cricket Australia chief James Sutherland promising "significant sanctions" at a news conference in Johannesburg. However, Australian coach Darren Lehmann escaped any punishment as Sutherland said that only the three players were aware of ball tampering. This lead to torrent of tweets on Twitter mocking Cricket Australia.
Sutherland and his governing body, under pressure from sponsors and in the midst of negotiations over a new broadcast deal, know they have plenty of work to do over the coming months to restore the image of the sport in Australia. The chief executive's decision in his news conference to studiously avoid using the word "cheating" to describe the conspiracy to scuff up one side of the ball with gritty tape would appear to have been an early false step on his part.
Social media slammed him for his equivocation and Australia's Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, one of series of politicians up to and including the Prime Minister to have commented on the matter, showed no such reticence. "Of course it was cheating," she told reporters in Canberra. "Any act to gain an unfair advantage acting illegally in sport is cheating." Cricket is Australia's one genuinely national sport and the disgust at the incident has played out in the media, social and traditional, for the last four days. The two biggest previous assaults on the integrity of the game in the country were England's 'bodyline' tour of the 1930s, when Australia were the victims, and the "underarm bowling" scandal of 1981.
With reports in the British media that he was about to resign having proved baseless, Lehmann is free to serve out his contract until after the Ashes tour of England next year. He is certain to have to do so with a new captain and at least part of it with a new top order after both his openers, Warner and Bancroft, and his best batsman, Smith, were sent home. Joe Burns, Matthew Renshaw and Glenn Maxwell are on their way to South Africa to plug the gaps for the fourth test against the Proteas, which starts in Johannesburg on Friday with the tourists needing a win to tie the series 2-2.
Tim Paine, who made his debut alongside Smith against Pakistan in 2010 but had a significantly less successful career since, will lead the side after being announced as Australia's 46th test captain by Sutherland on Tuesday.
It marks a remarkable turnaround for a player who was considered a surprise selection when he was included as wicketkeeper for last year's Ashes series. "Three and a half months ago he was thinking he might never play (domestic) Sheffield Shield cricket again, now he's the captain of Australia," former test bowler Stuart Clark told Fox Sports TV.
With Reuters input
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