iNTERVIEW

West Indies

Michael Holding

Lehmann

Bancroft

If I were the coach and I realised what had been happening by seeing all that was taking on the giant screen, my reaction would have been one of disgust. That was not his reaction. Michael Holding on Australian coach Darren Lehmann

Cricket Australia

Michael Holding

Steve Smith

I actually have no problem with people passing sarcastic remarks to their teammates within earshot of the opposition. But when you start attacking people personally and shout in their faces, invade their own space, that’s not sport. Michael Holding, West Indies Fast-Bowling Legend

Mitchell Starc

Fast-Bowling Legend, never the one to mince words, says the Sandpapergate was mishandled by everyone concerned. The neutral voice that he is in the matter, the West Indian legend took questions from Mirror. Excerpts from the interview…No, not at all. There have been much worse incidents in cricket but I think it was handled poorly by all those concerned.First of all, there should never have been a press conference. What you do is put out a statement admitting culpability but not subjecting yourself to all the questions. There was something done to the ball which was obvious. It should have been ‘yes, we have made a mistake. At the moment, we are very sorry about it but we’re in the middle of a Test. We’ll address it at the end of the match.’ Then because they agreed to the press conference, they made a lot of mistakes there in. I don’t know the exact words used but the captain said there was a senior group of cricketers who made the decision after a meeting which shows premeditation. Again, a severe mistake because the captain and the vice-captain are only a part of a the senior group, that implicates others.When you say the coach does not know, that seems to be total rubbish because the video evidence suggests otherwise. When he realised(Cameron) had been caught, he used the walkie-talkie to tell the twelfth man to alert (Bancroft). The look on his (Darren Lehmann’s) face was not of disgust to see what had taken place but one of a schoolboy caught with his hands in a cookie jar. If I were the coach and I realised what had been happening by seeing all that was taking on the giant screen, my reaction would have been one of disgust. That was not his reaction.They didn’t handle it very well at all. James Sutherland, Cricket Australia CEO, came all the way to South Africa. He could have saved his cricket board some money because his press conference didn’t say anything that everybody didn’t know, except for saying the coach wasn’t involved and I have dealt with that aspect already. This seems, I think, that they want to give the world an impression that not many people were involved in this. They wanted to control the damage. Obviously, the lesser people involved in this episode, the better. So they stuck with the captain, vice-captain and Bancroft who no one could argue were not involved. This is the impression I get. With Lehmann, it could be that they don’t want to throw him under the bus but they will accept his resignation after the tour ends.They are not overreacting. Whatever has happened till now is because of that press conference which should not have taken place. They are trying to limit the damage. As you rightly said, there have been past instances of players tampering with the ball without such a huge reaction. These teams in modern times travel with every help they could ever need. Where was the media manager, whoever that is? He/she should have taken over the situation and advised against the press conference. What was there to gain? He (she) shouldn’t be continuing in that position. The media manager’s job is not to just escort team members to their interviews and presentation ceremonies. But maybe I am wrong, and the advice was to not have the press conference and it was ignored.That has been truly busted in the public eye, but I knew long time ago it was rubbish. I’ve played for many years and commentated on many of their games. I have seen a former captain pick the ball from the ground and appeal, pretending he didn’t know the ball bounced. All this ‘hard and fair’ thing is absolutely rubbish. Not all of them behave that way but some go beyond pushing the envelope. They can tell other people (about their fair play) but don’t come to me with that.They went by their code of conduct and the accompanying protocol but now they have to be aware that their code of conduct and the punishments meted out under it are absolutely ridiculous. How can whatdid bring the same punishment as the captain of another team whose only crime was to not push his team in the field to bowl the allocated number of overs per day required? It’s like giving a drunk driver and somebody who’s driving without his driver’s licence the same punishment.Of course, that is the root cause of all this. That’s why I keep saying you should have yellow and red cards in cricket too. The first time you sledge you get a yellow card. You repeat the offence, get a red card, and leave the team. I actually have no problem with people passing sarcastic remarks to their teammates within earshot of the opposition. But when you start attacking people personally and shout in their faces, invade their own space, that’s not sport.When I played, I didn’t have to put up with such behaviour. There were a couple of individuals who’d shout, but in the last two decades or more, the quality of sledging has become very cheap. It’s like a pack of wolves and has got increasingly worse. You have cricketers now encouraging their team to behave like that.Reverse swing has been in the game for decades. The description “reverse swing” is new. In my time, it was just swing. What we used to do was shine the ball and after a while it would stop swinging in the direction it was intended to. We didn’t necessarily try to analyse what was taking place but all we did was turn the ball around. When the ball starts swinging towards the shine we would just put the shine towards the direction in which we wanted the ball to go. Simple.Those days we didn’t have cameramen focusing on the ball the way it’s done now, broadcast and television companies didn’t have equipment capable of doing that. So nobody knew exactly what was taking place. Now, with modern technology and slow-motion cameras providing close-ups, everything can be seen and so commentators start to analyse what is being shown.Because conventional swing is created by the bowler himself by the bowler’s wrist position, how the ball is released, body position and such niceties. When there is a bias created by the condition of the ball, you can bowl an outswinger with an inswinger’s action and an inswinger with an outswinger’s action. The ball will travel in whatever direction you push it in originally, and then when the bias created by the condition of the ball takes over, it will go in the other direction.For instance, as we’ve seen,will go to the edge of the crease when bowling round the wicket to the right handed batsman, use his action to push the ball in towards the striker, but with the shine facing the slips, the bias will take over and move the ball away by the time it gets to the batsman. You use your body to push it in one direction but the ball swings in the other direction later on down the pitch. You can’t do this with a brand new ball — it will go where your action sent it because there is no bias coming into play.Waqar Younis was so devastating because he would come close to the stumps, with a round-arm action, push the ball wide outside offstump, and when the bias took over, it would swing back with serious consequences. His yorkers tended to be toe-crushers when he got them right. That is reverse. You push it in one direction and it goes the other way as the bias of the ball takes over.Natural wear and tear is fine. The problem is cricketers want the ball to reverse early. Balls should not reverse swing in the first 30 overs or for that matter until about 40 to 45 overs on lush outfields that we play on these days. But they want to be more effective earlier. So they’ll try all means to make the ball deteriorate. We (the West Indies of the 80s) didn’t have to scratch or throw the ball because we’d back ourselves to take wickets naturally. Whenever the reverse came along, we took advantage of that.I don’t know whether CA is putting pressure on other boards, but I’d like to see ICC and other boards taking it up seriously…recognising there’s a problem.Axed Australian skipper Steve Smith escorted by police as he leaves the OR Tambo International Airportin Johannesburg yesterday