The newspapers are full of the ball-tampering issue that is now plaguing the Australian cricket captain Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft. Australia itself as a nation is quite rightly annoyed at what one of its premier sports teams has stooped to, to try and gain a small competitive advantage.
Peter Terry, a sports psychologist for more than 30 years from the University of Southern Queensland, has this to say about the incident. “The public fury that greeted the premeditated ball tampering orchestrated by Australian cricketers Cameron Bancroft, Steve Smith and other team members in Cape Town suggests the incident is seen as diminishing the personal integrity of every Australian citizen.
The conspiracy to cheat, casually hatched by the senior playing group over a lunch break, reverberates well beyond cricket and even sport itself.”
Quite right – it does reverberate, and ripple out far further than just sport. These types of practices are played out in business boardrooms across the world, every day, where tampering with ‘finances’ ‘cashflows’, ‘cash-gaps’ are seen as morally OK if it gains a competitive advantage. It is not until someone is caught being underhand, do the Mea Culpa’s start. Even then people try to weasel out of their role in the ‘scheme’ and try to pass the blame. Obfustication is a word that quickly comes to mind.
The difference between a moral man and a man of honour, is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked, and he has not been caught
Imagine if getting morals and values back into sport and the business boardroom was a priority for all leaders. Imagine how more effective – long term – all sport and business would be. On the Richter scale, I wonder how much TRUST would be increased if this were to happen?