Sydney: Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has sought assurances from Cricket Australia that the ball-tampering scandal involving Australia’s Test team will be fully investigated.
Mr Turnbull said he had spoken with CA chairman David Peever to express his “shock and disappointment” at the actions of Australia’s cricketers, several of whom he said he knew personally.
“It seems quite out of character,” Mr Turnbull told reporters in Victoria.
“We all woke up this morning shocked and bitterly disappointed by the news from South Africa.
“It seemed completely beyond the belief, that the Australian cricket team had been involved in cheating. After all, our cricketers are role models. And cricket is synonymous with fair play. How can our team be involved in cheating like this? It beggars belief.”
“(David Peever) has said to me that Cricket Australia will be responding decisively, as they should.
The Prime Minister would not be drawn on the question of whether skipper Steve Smith should be stripped of the captaincy, saying that was a matter for cricket administrators.
“I have to say that the whole nation who holds those that wear the baggy green up on a pedestal — about as high as you can get in Australia, certainly higher than any politician — this is a shocking disappointment. It’s wrong. And I look forward to Cricket Australia taking decisive action soon.”
CA has refused to sack Smith and will only act after conducting a full investigation. Chief executive James Sutherland has dispatched integrity manager Iain Roy and high performance manager Pat Howard to Cape Town to investigate the fiasco.
It comes after Australian cricketers confessed to cheating in a plot hatched by Smith and senior players as they saw the third test against South Africa slipping away.
Overnight, Smith said he would not stand down as Australian captain, but admitted he and the Test team’s leadership group were responsible for the ball-tampering incident, in which Cameron Bancroft used yellow adhesive tape to pick up “granules” beside the pitch and rub it on the ball to rough it up in an attempt to get it to reverse swing.
Despite calls for Smith to stand down, Sutherland said investigators would travel to South Africa to “understand the facts” before any action is taken.
“I understand that that is not necessarily the fullness of response that everyone is looking for right now. But you will appreciate that there’s an element of process that needs to be undertaken here,” Sutherland told reporters in Melbourne.
