What a pantomime this ball-tampering scandal has been

I haven’t seen so many men crying since the end of A Tale of Two Cities at the Scala Cinema in Oxford in the late 1950s. As the credits rolled, stern-faced blokes whipped out their hankies and dabbed their eyes. But by the time the lights went up, the hankies were replaced and upper lips stiffened. These after all were men, many of whom had served in the war.

On balance, you feel, that is how men should behave, rather than sobbing uncontrollably with their parents around, like Steve Smith, or — in the case of wee Davey Warner — doing an absurd name, rank and number impression from a prison camp film. All because they had been caught. And then caught lying. I’m not sure how long these Aussie cricketers would have lasted in Revolutionary France. Or indeed in Stalag Luft III.

Warner is a man whose idea of sledging on the pitch is swearing repeatedly at players. That’s not personal abuse he says. Yet when an opponent might reply with a passing remark about Warner’s wife, the vivacious Candice, Warner goes ballistic. ‘That’s personal abuse…’ Oh please..

What a pantomime much of the ball-tampering saga has been.

Umpires: ‘Oh yes you were.’

Bancroft: ‘Oh no I wasn’t.’

Crowd (watching sandpaper disappear into Bancroft’s jockstrap on a giant screen): ‘Oh yes he was!’

If any more good can come of this saga, it will be to show football that VAR — the video referee system — will only work, and work spectacularly, if the punters in the ground also see the replays. The public unmasking of Australia’s cheating was both wonderful theatre and an absolute guarantee that the episode couldn’t be, er, tampered with by officials for ‘the good of the game’.