IT hurts, Australia, doesn’t it?

It hurts when someone comes into your backyard, on your turf and then beats you in a furious rush for the third series on the trot. It hurts when a side you had on the ground, foot on the throat, for so many years, finds the rhythm of winning that you once took for granted and does to you what you once did to them in such a brutal fashion. It hurt South Africans for years. God, it hurt. It hurt for 21 of the 40 Tests South Africa has played you and lost since the country’s return from isolation. Today? It doesn’t hurt, not in the slightest.

It hurt some Australians so much that they needed a deflection, and, lo, did the mint-chewing, butt-kicking Faf du Plessis give you one. He has been found guilty of a practice common in cricket, fined his match fee and given three demerit points. Yet, he had a quiet smile as he walked across the Adelaide Oval after his hearing, a cup of coffee in hand and that dastardly security man at his side. Du Plessis knew he had hurt the Australians, that this proud cricket country was furious and lashing out, seeking someone, anyone to blame.

Faf du Plessis shines the ball during the second Test. Source: Channel 9

First it was the selectors. Then the players. Then the management. Then, according to Ricky Ponting, it was kinda, partly, in a small way, the fault of those TV commentators who took the easy money to talk about the sport instead of the lesser pay to coach and help cricket had dug themselves in. That would be the same Punter who was commentating on the game for British television.

Television cameras found Du Plessis with his hands in his gob. Not the best place for them to be. Pages upon pages, hours upon hours, slow-motion after slow-motion of analysis of spit. There were social media spats. Dummies were spat. South Africa were cheats. It overtook the mess of selections and a series already conceded. It was classic Australian sport journalism. South African sports coaches have always called some of the Australian sports media the 12th man. Before the 2005 Test in Perth, Jake White, the former Springbok coach, once asked me why we didn’t go after the opposition teams with the same sniping, knock-them-down hits that they experienced. It’s just not the way of things in South Africa. Aggressive, in-your-face door-stopping is not usual in South African journalism.

Will Crouch found that out when he tried to manufacture a story at the airport. He came looking for something for the evening news and found it in Zunaid Wadee, the team security manager. I know Wadee well. He does not get angry. One headline suggested he “assaulted” Crouch. Really? I’ve seen harder assaults in croquet.

I was taken aback when Hashim Amla, usually the stoic and calm one, fronted up to the media with the rest of the team. He does not do feisty, but they, too, had had enough. He fought back. He told them they were trying to tarnish their achievement, that they were looking for an excuse. He took on the media. It reminded me of Graeme Smith. Remember him? I suspect you do.

In Smith’s first Test, at Newlands, against Australia in 2002, he had taken a stream of abuse. He broke the code of what went happened on the field stayed on the field. Matthew Hayden swore at him for two minutes straight when he walked on to the field. Hayden “stood on the crease for about two minutes telling me that I wasn’t f**king good enough,” Smith told South African Sports Illustrated. “You know, you’re not f**king good enough. How the f**k are you going to handle Shane Warne when he’s bowling in the rough? What the f**k are you going to do?” Brett Lee told Smith he was going to “f**king kill me” after they had bumped into each other mid-pitch. “All Warne does is call you a c**t all day,” said Smith.

The square-jawed one had had enough at one stage and chirped Glenn McGrath, asking him if he was “constantly on his period”.

McGrath went spare, but Biff had not stopped talking. He came to Australia in 2005 and talked some more. He knew the Australian media would put pressure on the team, and so the captain, just two years into the job, decided he would go on the attack and start a war of words. He told papers that Warne had the hump because Ricky Ponting was captain and not him. Warne went spare. But, then, as we have heard in the Channel 9 booth, he so often does. He’s a legend. Ask him. He’ll tell you.

South Africa lost that series, but Smith believed he had sewn a seed of doubt. Three years later he came back and won in Australia. That hurt Australia, but they applauded him when he walked out with a broken hand to bat last in Sydney. Then he came back in 2012 and did the same thing. That hurt again. Faf du Plessis was the cause of that hurt in Adelaide in a match-saving innings, 110 off 376 balls on his debut. Then South Africa won the series in Perth. Hurt? Pain? Hell, even Ponting had had enough.

Kyle Abbott eats a red frog sweet at the drinks break as Faf du Plessis laughs. Source: News Corp Australia

The rest of the world has poured scorn on the mint story. Even Hayden reckons it was bogus: “Ball tampering OMG please. What about this ‘Watch the ball’ the rest will look after itself!!!” As Dale Steyn tweeted: “Beaten with the bat. Beaten with the ball. Beaten in the field. Mentally stronger. Here’s an idea, Let’s blame it on a lollipop #soft”.

Steyn is right, Australia. You got soft. Then you tried to get hard again. In the middle, you found a muddle. Then you sought a distraction, you needed someone else to blame instead of looking inward. You screamed at Du Plessis. You harangued him. You blamed him. You chased him. And, for a while, you forgot you were 2-0 down in a home Test series against South Africa. That’s three home series losses on the trot.

It hurts, doesn’t it?

Kevin McCallum is the Chief Sports Writer of The Star newspaper in Johannesburg

Faf Du Plessis is free to play in the Third Test against Australia at Adelaide Oval. Source: Getty Images

Ball tampering OMG please. What about this 'Watch the ball' the rest will look after itself!!! — Matthew Hayden AM (@HaydosTweets) November 18, 2016