No 1 on the list of countries lacerating Australia’s cricketers is Australia itself. Steve Smith’s homeland is undergoing an identity crisis that reveals how deeply the Baggy Greens are embedded in the nation’s psyche.

Outsiders might have considered it a bit cheesy to say Australia’s cricket captain is junior only to the Prime Minister. Now, you had better believe it.

When Smith’s team won the Ashes in Perth in December, it was hardly national rejoicing and car horns all night. But the low-key reaction was misleading. The ball-tampering scandal pullulating in South Africa has sent the country into a spin and confirmed the misgivings that were already there about Smith’s generation.

“An earthquake of arrogance” was one front-page response. And any event that can make the great Jim Maxwell choke up on air during live commentary is bound to leave an indelible mark in Australian sporting history.

During the Ashes, Smith’s team paraded a renegade streak that was concealed by traditional hostility to the Poms. That cover is no longer there, and Australians have been piling in.

Before fighting back tears, Maxwell called the ball-tampering in Cape Town, “so blatant, so stupid, naive and immature”. He has also said: "I've started to become more and more offended by the arrogance of some of the players in the way they behave.”