Michael Jeh: It's the Australian way, you know!

Cricket Australia CEO James Sutherland is on safe ground despite the turmoilIn Australia amongst the cricketing fraternity who are in the know the McCosker Review is not expected to change anything except at a superficial level unless there is a mass cleanout from the top of the tree It is a business axiom that culture eats strategy for breakfast Cricket Australia CA mouth platitudes about the Spirit of Cricket but it is seen as nothing more than lip service They have monitored tacitly approved even the steady decline of the behaviour standards of this team and now they are commissioning a review to try and address the values that they did nothing to curbWhen the inevitable flashpoints occur CA fall back on their favourite mantra of hard but fair This has now proved to be one of the great hoaxes That precious moral high ground has been ceded with this latest shame They imbued this team with a false sense of invincibility that their talent or ethics didnt deserveThis sense of national disappointment cannot be understated I have never seen an incident that has united the Australian cricket family like this one The contempt for what has occurred in Cape Town is almost 100 per cent oneway traffic Australians have this thing about cheating They simply cannot abide the concept It is a bizarre irony because they view cheating in a simplistic manner It is okay to sledge and abuse opponents or not walk when you nick one to the keeperThat apparently does not constitute cheating We have this notion that only the Chinese and Russian types cheat in a sanctioned systemic way And then along came Cape Town 2018 If India are clever they may recognise a beast with eerily similar DNA slowly taking shape with their own cricketers To ignore it would be to learn nothing from the tarnished reputation that the next Bradman will now have as his legacy Virat Kohli take note this need not be your destiny It ultimately boils down to a deep understanding of what the Spirit of Cricket truly means deep in the hearts of the people who own the game on the maidans and laneways You dont need a review to tell you thatSadly it appears that the culture of dishonesty and deceit is deeply rooted in the fabric of the organisation like a malignant tumour Being loose with the truth is a first response from management to foot soldiers going back many decades The old ACB covered up the Mark WaughShane Warne scandal whilst at the same time condemning Salim Malik to a life ban Even this incident speaks to a culture that lies first and covers up laterLook at that first press conference and youll see what I mean Cameron Bancroft said it was sticky tape but if CA are to be believed now it was sandpaper Smith said it was the Leadership Group but now it apparently was just himself and Warner Who do we believe Is it any wonder then that these spoilt brats kept pushing boundaries buoyed by the perception that management would turn a blind eye to anything Until they got caught cheating Many of the people involved will no doubt be very sensitive to sniping from the mediaFor a culture that embraces sledging they are particularly sensitive when it comes back at them It lies at the heart of the illtempered series in South Africa They were happy to dish it out but when the Proteas and the local crowd started to return serve in spades they could not handle the heat Theres an old truism if you cant handle the heat dont stoke too many firesA few years ago after the graceless World Cup Final victory I wrote a piece for ESPN Cricinfo that questioned why Australia felt the need to tarnish the moment by crudely sledging the Kiwis for being too nice in the words of now Assistant Coach Brad Haddin The Australian media picked up on that piece and retweeted it slamming me for daring to question why I would ask such inconvenient questionsThe word integrity has been bandied about so much but I question if the administrators actually know what that means in a real sense to the club cricketer who receives emails from the CEO with more promises of change and reviews The Chairman David Peever is backing his CEO to remain in the role even now So the CEOs role that supervised the very culture that is now in dire need of review is safe in his job Call me naive but if his long legacy has led us to this point where cricket is so completely broken that it needs a review of this magnitude how is that a measure of successIf the review is conducted by explayers who were part of this same toxic culture how do we realistically expect any new ideas to emerge As Mark Waugh and Ricky Ponting have already predictably said they dont think theres a cultural problem Of course they dont Anything less is an admission of their own failings in shaping the very culture that now needs a complete overhaul Theres an old saying that is worth finishing with If you have integrity nothing else matters If you dont have integrity nothing else mattersMichael Jeh is a Brisbanebased former firstclass cricketer 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