Steve Smith's Men: Behind Australian Cricket's Fall

by Geoff Lemon

No Australian player had ever been charged with tampering, and now came a case that wasn’t even marginal. This was proper cheating. To be caught so fully, so squarely, and looking so amateur in the attempt, just capped it off. And if we knew anything, it was that the least experienced player in a team wouldn’t develop that plan on behalf of ten colleagues of his own accord. This story was going to be huge.

This book is not a detective story. It won’t give you every detail of what happened in the Cape Town dressing rooms. When it gets released, Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft will still have careers to salvage – bans will end, comebacks will begin, and it will remain in their interest to avoid any detail of what happened or how it came to pass. They will stay vague and speak in platitudes. Under the omerta of professional cricketers, their teammates will do the same. Only once careers finish will talk begin. Someone can write the comprehensive history then.

It’s illegal to publish a cricket book without a Neville Cardus quote,

Typhoon Tyson destroyed Australia in 1954–55, John Snow in 1970–71, and neither toured the country a second time. Australian crowds pelted Snow with beer cans for his hostile bouncers, then cheered Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson for the same four years later.

Smith made 76 but got a bottom edge into his stumps. Mitch Marsh and Paine went the same way, testament to the lack of pace. ‘Here be drag-ons,’ wrote some internet wit.

When Smith says he loves batting, he means batting. Other players start fanging for big shots but he loves a good leave.