I made my own mistake in 1981, and the shame is rarely about the act alone

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It’s tempting to say Newlands was the fault of three men, and the game is cleaner for having punished them. I don’t believe that. The harder lesson points back at the rest of us.

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Not the footage, which we’ve all seen, but the feeling that came with it. It was heavy and familiar, the sense that Australian cricket had been walking towards something like this for a while, and that a lot of us had watched it happen and kept quiet.

I’m not writing as a bystander. I made my own mistake in 1981, and I’ve lived with it long enough to know the shame is rarely about the act alone. It’s about knowing you had the chance to be better but inexplicably slipped up. That’s what I saw in the faces of those young men at Newlands.

Steve Smith and David Warner were suspended for 12 months and Cameron Bancroft for nine. Smith and Warner were barred from leadership roles. They broke the rules and they knew it. Nobody should pretend otherwise, and none of them has.

But I could never watch that press conference and see only wrongdoing. I saw a captain who couldn’t hold himself together and a young opener who looked like he wished the floor would swallow him.

These weren’t hardened cheats. They were young men who’d picked up on what the surrounding environment rewarded, and they did something they deeply regret and will carry for the rest of their lives.

Others from the 2018 squad can say for themselves what they knew. Some may remember it differently, and that’s their right.

Simon Longstaff’s review found Cricket Australia and the national team had drifted into a culture where winning mattered more than almost anything.

I read that and felt implicated. I was part of that world for most of my life, as a player, captain, coach and commentator.

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