Cultural problems evident in national team for quite a few years prior: Greg Chappell on Sandpaper Gate

Former Australia captain Greg Chappell believes the cultural problems in the dressing room, led to the Sandpaper Gate in Cape Town in 2018. Chappell also revealed a chat with former Australia coach Darren Lehmann prior to the series. The former Australia captain had discussed dragging David Warner back in from being the attack dog.

“Couldn’t believe how the dressing room environment had changed”

“When I first experienced the Australian team environment on my return to work for Cricket Australia in 2007, I couldn’t believe how the dressing room environment had changed,” said the former Australia captain in his column for The Age.

“Things like blokes throwing bats in the dressing room or having extensive temper tantrums were commonplace. Fires of this kind were left to blow themselves out, but quite often that would take a long time. That’s the delicacy with which I viewed the dressing room. It is very easy for group-think to take over, and all of a sudden something that others would barely see as a blip on the radar becomes an all-consuming issue. That’s the way we’ve always played cricket. I disagreed totally. My response was, ‘No Darren, maybe that’s the way you’ve played cricket, but it wasn’t the way I played,” added Chappell.

“Banter went on, the odd bit of sledging went on, but not haranguing opposition players and certainly not doing so in a premeditated way. It’s never been acceptable in any workplace, let alone on a cricket field, and it shouldn’t be acceptable now,” he stated.

“In Steve’s time, it became acceptable to stand there and harangue an opposition player”

Chappell went on to blame the Steve Waugh era which witnessed opposition players being harangued.

“While this sort of thing was occasionally seen under Allan Border and Mark Taylor, in Steve’s time it became acceptable to stand there and harangue an opposition player as a commonplace tactic. Over succeeding generations it went from a necessity to something like a badge of honour to be able to get up the opposition’s nose faster than they could get up ours. Steve was sitting on one of the physio benches staring into space; I walked into the room towards him and he didn’t register that anyone was there,” he said.

“I said “how are you going” and he blinked and said, “Oh mate, I’m gone. Can’t sleep, I’m not eating during a Test match I can’t do anything. All I can do is play cricket and stagger back to my room,” concluded Chappell.

Adam Gilchrist slams Cricket Australia over superficial investigation in 2018 ball-tampering case

Former Australian cricketer Adam Gilchrist has slammed the country’s highest cricketing body, Cricket Australia (CA), of not taking the 2018 ball-tampering case as seriously as it should have. The former wicket-keeper batter said that CA should have done a thorough investigation into the matter and gone deeper into the problem of ball-tampering.

“There was an opportunity for CA if they were going to make such a strong statement they needed to do a more thorough investigation to work out where the root of the problem was,” Gilchrist said.

“Anyone would be naive to think people were not aware of what was going on about ball maintenance. I don’t think Cricket Australia wanted to go there. They did not want to go any deeper than that superficial example of ball-tampering,” he added.