Has Darren Kane’s glowing tribute to David Warner (Saturday’s SMH, above) been nominated yet for the Booker prize for fiction?
That’s the simple ask of our Media Glass House compilers who doubt they’ve ever seen such a bucketload of bullshit dished up as supposedly and thoughtful cricket analysis from a bloke who also goes by Advocatus Diaboli.
And, yes, our MGH compilers have considered the possibility that Kane is simply playing the devil’s advocate here and deep down he hates Warner as much as many of the rest of us do. But his article tells us the exact opposite.
Kane kicks off his column with a Warner claim a few days back that he’d gladly down a few beers with those who hate him. We at the MGH suspect that’s total bullshit anyway but let’s move quickly on to the first sign that Kane sees himself in twin roles – as Warner’s PR officer and of course as a cricket opiner.
And there it is (at top left and below) … You must question what he’s actually done, however to generate such opprobrium!!!!
Question that if you must, Advocatus Diaboli. Many of us won’t.
Perhaps Kane wasn’t born before #sandpapergate in South Africa in 2018 when Cameron Bancroft was caught by television cameras trying to rough up one side of the ball with sandpaper to make it swing in flight.
If Kane was born before then and has simply forgotten the details, #sandpapergate showed the world what dreadful cheats we really are when we put our mind to it. And the worst aspect of it all? Forget the South Africans. Our old enemy, England, laughed in our faces. Long and hard, and deservedly so.
Warner clearly was the chief culprit – Smith played Sergeant Schultz; too gutless as leader to put a stop to it – in this disgusting ball tampering exercise. Warner gutlessly got Bancroft to do the dirty work for whoever in our national side knew of this.
SANDPAPER, Kane! Fucking sandpaper! SAND-FUCKING-PAPER!
With cameras everywhere, the sneaky, dirty, lowdown, unAustralian trick was bound to be caught out. Warner may as well have gotten poor gullible, fallguy Bancroft to sit on a pedal-powered angle-grinder at midoff and roughed up one side of the ball between deliveries that way.
And yet Kane questions what Warner could have possibly done to deserve the attention of all these haters out there.
But of course Kane’s rose-coloured version of this cricketing almost-great does not end there.
Kane writes: A sliver of sandpaper down Cameron Bancroft’s pants was never a good look, but there can’t have been too much in the way of deplorable conduct given the International Cricket Council took no action against Warner. For anything. No sanction, whatsoever. Cricket Australia, though, proceeded to conduct a secret investigation that ran for just a few days and which lacked any semblance of either transparency or procedural fairness but nonetheless resulted in Warner being banned from the game for 12 months and being told he would never be the captain of anything again. Ever.
Warner was robbed by that decision to a far greater extent than he was by the thieves who made off with his baggy green cap.
Australian cricket is much poorer for him having been thrown to the wolves in that way, the arch scapegoat. Those sanctions were obviously and unreasonably penal in nature. No conduct or misconduct that took place was deserving of a 12-week suspension, let alone a year.
Ahhh! Thrown to the wolves! The arch scapegoat. What they did was not worthy of even a three-month penalty? Really, Darren Kane?
We at the MGH can’t afford the time or effort to delve into Kane’s claims that the ICC took no action – hint: maybe it wasn’t theirs to take or protocols left it to Cricket Australia to take action – and of a CA kangaroo court that unfairly over-punished Warner, and presumably Smith. We New South Welshmen always stick together, right?
We’ll just leave the images of Warner and Smith blubbering their hearts out as contrition for the truly dreadful thing they did and not because naughty CA supposedly hanged them both out to dry without giving them a chance to explain themselves between heartfelt sobs.
Our MGH compilers and The Bug generally will stick with the view that the punishment dished out to these two cheating sandpaper sooks was not nearly strong enough.
And we won’t be seeking Warner out for a chat and a few bevies. Why would you want to hang out with a dreadful prick like that who made Australia the laughing stock of the sporting world and trashed our reputations as decent, honest people and good sports forever?
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