Kumar Sangakkara calls for a new world order to address the “evil” of ball-tampering and the manner in which cricket is played.
Kumar Sangakkara writes every month in Wisden Cricket Monthly magazine. His column is sponsored by Red Dot Tours, the Sri Lanka Travel Specialists
The visual of Steve Smith, captain of Australia, crying in a press conference was hard to watch for me. You were looking at this fantastic cricketer sitting there utterly broken, hardly ably to speak.
It was a very moving press conference. And after I watched it I thought, ‘Yes, the three of them were involved in something quite horrible, but was their failing an isolated incident, for which they themselves are solely responsible? Is Steve Smith the face of ball-tampering? Is this only his failing?’
And then at the end of that year, another meeting: to reassess, to reevaluate, to commit again to the values they all hold dear and are responsible for upholding. To say, ‘Listen guys, this is how we’re going to play the game. These are the issues we’ve had and this is how we sort them out. And as captains, you guys are responsible’.
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