Smith must step down. Credit:Andy Brownbill Six changes would leave Australia with a skeleton, threadbare team for what will be the deciding match of the series. But that is irrelevant now. At stake is the integrity and honour not just of Australian cricket, but all of Australian sport. Typically, when scandal and skullduggery beset sports, Australia sets itself piously above the fray. Aggressive and mouthy, perhaps, but cheating? Not conscionable in this in all ways sporting nation. Traditionally, the cricket team carries that standard. Its role is now forfeit. The 1981 underarm incident, to which all referred on Sunday, was ugly, but not against the rules. Nor was Bodyline. But ball-tampering using - crucially - a foreign agent is, calculatedly, wilfully, brazenly so. Australian cricketers have not been credibly implicated in match-fixing, and only for vanity's sake in illegal drugs. In that context, Saturday's crime was the most egregious of all. Yet Smith in his press conference said only that it was a one-off, that he was embarrassed and sorry, that he would move on, that it was a pity they were not gathered to talk about the cricket. He might have well have been dusting off his hands. And so we arrive at the crux: the Australian cricket team just doesn't get it. It didn't get it when they arrived in South Africa and asked for the pitch mikes to be muted between balls, virtually announcing the campaign of abuse to come. Perhaps it should have asked for the cameras to avert their gaze as well. It didn't get it as the humour of the series deteriorated to the point of pathetic, marring an otherwise sublime contest and alienating fans in their own country.

It didn't get that after South African captain Faf du Plessis and his Minties here not quite 18 months ago, there would be extra vigilance in this return series. It didn't get that as the spikiness and aggravation grew, the vigilance would redouble. It did get that Test cricket is highly and minutely scrutinised anyway, with cameras pointing in every direction, and went ahead with its doltish plot anyway. The least sanction should be for utter stupidity. The Australian team doesn't get that as the bad blood boils, it might yet have to deal with a riot in Johannesburg. South African fans are not famously sanguine in these matters. It doesn't get that the position it took last winter, when arguing to Cricket Australia that it was a responsible and far-sighted cohort who deserved a greater say in the running of the game, is now laughable. It doesn't get that the television rights that pay their way depend on their wide appeal. Those rights are up for grabs now, and just last Friday, CA sent the bidding networks away, telling them to try again. Now they might wonder if it is worth trying at all. There will also be big sponsors squirming in their swivel chairs and looking through the fine print. What is Cameron Bancroft hiding down his pants?

The Austraian team might get the uncomfortable way this is going to play out for them on cricket grounds around the world for the next couple of years. But it doesn't get the way it is going to reflect on other Australians sportsmen and women and complicate their endeavours. Some have spoken up already. And it doesn't understand what it has just thrown away. Despite everything, the Australian cricket team generally enjoys the nation's goodwill. Rarely was there anything that another Smith century or a burst of wickets from Starc could not put right. Loading Even we media would be swept up. But never before have the Australian cricket public been asked to endorse blatant, unmitigated, self-confessed, shameless cheating. Nearly every follower is feeling a little roughed up on the wrong side at the moment. Forgiveness will not come easily. It is this vacuum that is most troubling. It speaks of a culture in which a base will to win rules, oblivious to the wider world, insensitive to all other considerations that go by the word sport. It betrays yet a cocoon mentality. In that cocoon, a sheepishly raised hand, as if acknowledging a foul in basketball, will put all right, and we can get on with the game.