Ashes

And maybe we should hand back all those cycling medals we won at the Olympics. At least the Aussies do seem to be genuinely appalled by this, unlike our cheats who just go into denial.

It’s sad for cricket generally. I’m glad Cricket Australia have taken a tough approach today.

Warner was singled out for a ‘never to be in a leadership position again’ clause as the orchestrator. He noticeably didn’t front up to the cameras and make an admission the other day, albeit the admission by Smith and Bancroft was a lie that it was tape and dust as opposed to sandpaper - confirmed by CA as a lie.

It’s fashionable to knock Warner, and I won’t disappoint. Sonny Bill was staying in the same hotel during the Test, apparently, so perhaps the horrible little man had his mind elsewhere than to bother with fessing up to the Press. More likely though, that, as with sledging, he’s happy to dish it out, but is a classic example of an old school shit bully who can’t take the consequences when it comes home to roost. He will have pressured Bancroft. CA seem convinced of that, reflected it in Bancroft’s punishment. so that’s good enough for me.

I hope Warner never gets back into the side and suspect the £1m IPL contract loss will be hurting more at this time for Warner than it does for Smith, who will be hurting more for his disgrace and love for his country.

Bancroft is due to play for Somerset this coming season. Be interesting to see if that ends up happening.

Thank goodness for that! Children and babies being killed daily in Syria, record levels of homeless people in our so called developed countries, record levels of refugees world wide, record levels of poverty world-wide - and all I hear about on the news is about a bloody cricket ball, then compounded by being repeated on the local news because of some tenuous link! I'm glad that one has been put to bed locally, although probably not as I expect somebody will dig up that an auntie of somebody in the crowd at the test match knows a friend of the captain's wife, and she lives in Cornwall!