How Australia cricket team hatched a plan to cheat

Agencies
March 25, 2018

Cape Town, Mar 25: The reputation of Australia's cricket team is in tatters after captain Steve Smith confessed to coming up with a plan with senior players to cheat South Africa by tampering with the ball in the third Test.

Smith and Cameron Bancroft, the fielder chosen to carry out the tampering, admitted to cheating after Bancroft was caught on television using a piece of sticky tape to rub dirt into the ball, then trying to hide the tape down his trousers when umpires suspected something was up.

Here's a look at what happened on Saturday at Newlands.

THE PLAN

At the lunch break on the third day of the third Test in Cape Town, Australia are in trouble. South Africa lead by over 100 runs with just one wicket down, look set to forge further ahead, and the ball isn't doing much to help Australia. With the series 1-1 with one more Test to play after Cape Town, it's a crucial moment in a battle between the archrivals.

Skipper Smith and other senior Australia players - Smith referred to them as the “leadership group'' but refused to name them - decide they will tamper with the ball when play restarts, a desperate attempt to get it to reverse swing and give their struggling bowlers an advantage. Smith said no members of the coaching staff knew about the players' intentions.

The Australians get some yellow sticky tape from a team kit bag, see if they can get some loose dirt from the pitch stuck to it when they're back out on the field, and then use it to rough up the ball.

THE MAN

Bancroft, an opening batsman in his eighth Test, is chosen as the player to do the tampering because he is in the vicinity of the discussion between the senior players in the dressing room, according to Smith.

Confessing later, Bancroft said he was “in the wrong place at the wrong time'' but denied he was pressured into doing it. As a fairly low-profile player, Bancroft appears to be a good person to do the tampering as he wouldn't normally attract too much attention when Australia is fielding.

STICKY POSITION

Sure enough, Bancroft hides the sticky tape in the pocket of his trousers. When he gets the chance, he collects some “granules'' beside the pitch, sticks them to the tape, and uses it on the ball.

The problem is he's caught red-handed by television cameras, and it's replayed over and over on the big screen, in close up and slow-motion. The embarrassing images are also replayed on TVs all around the world.

Panicking when the on-field umpires become interested, Bancroft resorts to hiding the offending piece of yellow tape down the front of his trousers. He produces a harmless sunglasses bag from his pocket when approached by the umpires, and appears to have gotten away with it. But his desperate attempt to hide the evidence in his underwear is also caught by TV, and replayed multiple times.

THE CONFESSION

Australia announce they won't be doing normal interviews immediately after the day's play with the host broadcasters, and appearing only at a news conference, at which it is unusually very late.

With overwhelming video evidence against them, Smith and Bancroft face the music at the conference, admitting everything in front of yet more television cameras. Smith said the players were desperate to try and gain some advantage because “we saw this game as such an important game.''

THE FALLOUT

Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland has refused to take any immediate action against captain Steve Smith over the ball-tampering scandal, saying Sunday an investigative team has been sent to South Africa to look into all aspects before deciding what action to take.

Sutherland also refused to make comment on Steve Smith's long-term position as captain on Sunday, a position Smith, while embarrassed and regretful, had said he would not resign from.

“I still think I'm the right person for the job,'' Smith said. “Obviously today was a big mistake.''

That would be a steep and sudden fall for Smith, currently the top Test batsman in the world and the man who led Australia to a 4-0 Ashes rout just two months ago.

Misconduct charges brought by the International Cricket Council are also likely to be released on Sunday. Bancroft said he's been charged for ball tampering, which carries a penalty of 3-4 disciplinary points. If Bancroft receives the higher end of the punishment, he will be banned for the final Test in Johannesburg.

Also intriguing is the role of Smith and the rest of the “leadership group.'' They could also face charges of bringing the game into disrepute. If vice-captain David Warner was part of the group, a logical presumption as the second most senior player in the team, a single demerit point would see him also banned for the final Test. That could leave Australia without both of its opening batsmen.

The bigger picture is the public back home in Australia, who woke up to the embarrassing news. Australia's cricket team is its biggest sports team and as fiercely supportive as Australians are, they are also fiercely critical if the team has done wrong.

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News Network
June 2,2020

Jun 2: Former West Indies captain Daren Sammy has spoken strongly against the killing if George Floyd in USA, and has now urged the ICC & all the other boards in the world to come together and fight the evil.

In a series of tweets Sammy wrote how the blacks have been suffering for a long time.

“For too long black people have suffered. I’m all the way in St Lucia and I’m frustrated If you see me as a teammate then you see #GeorgeFloyd Can you be part of the change by showing your support. #BlackLivesMatter,” Sammy wrote.

He also wrote, “@ICC and all the other boards are you guys not seeing what’s happening to ppl like me? Are you not gonna speak against the social injustice against my kind. This is not only about America. This happens everyday #BlackLivesMatter now is not the time to be silent. I wanna hear u.”

“Right now if the cricket world not standing against the injustice against people of color after seeing that last video of that foot down the next of my brother you are also part of the problem.”

Earlier, West Indies star batsman Chris Gayle has said racism exists in cricket too, saying he gets the 'end of the stick' even within teams.

"Black lives matter just like any other life. Black people matter, p***k all racist people, stop taking black people for fools, even our own black people wise the p***k up and stop bringing down your own! I have travelled the globe and experience racial remarks towards me because I am black, believe me, the list goes on," Gayle wrote in his Instagram story.

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News Network
February 24,2020

Beijing, Feb 24: The lockdown of Guo Jing's neighbourhood in Wuhan -- the city at the heart of China's new coronavirus epidemic -- came suddenly and without warning.

Unable to go out, the 29-year-old is now sealed inside her compound where she has to depend on online group-buying services to get food.

"Living for at least another month isn't an issue," Guo told news agency, explaining that she had her own stash of pickled vegetables and salted eggs.

But what scares her most is the lack of control -- first, the entire city was sealed off, and then residents were limited to exiting their compound once every three days.

Now even that has been taken away.

Guo is among some 11 million residents in Wuhan, a city in central Hubei province that has been under effective quarantine since January 23 as Chinese authorities race to contain the epidemic.

Since then, its people have faced a number of tightening controls over daily life as the death toll from the virus swelled to over 2,500 in China alone.

But the new rules this month barring residents from leaving their neighbourhoods are the most restrictive yet -- and for some, threaten their livelihoods.

"I still don't know where to buy things once we've finished eating what we have at home," said Pan Hongsheng, who lives with his wife and two children.

Some neighbourhoods have organised group-buying services, where supermarkets deliver orders in bulk.

But in Pan's community, "no one cares".

"The three-year-old doesn't even have any milk powder left," Pan told news agency, adding that he has been unable to send medicine to his in-laws -- both in their eighties -- as they live in a different area.

"I feel like a refugee."

The "closed management of neighbourhoods is bound to bring some inconvenience to the lives of the people", Qian Yuankun, vice secretary of Hubei's Communist Party committee, said at a press briefing last week.

Authorities on Monday allowed healthy non-residents of the city to leave if they never had contact with patients, but restrictions remained on those who live in Wuhan.

Demand for group-buying food delivery services has rocketed with the new restrictions, with supermarkets and neighbourhood committees scrambling to fill orders.

Most group-buying services operate through Chinese messaging app WeChat, which has ad-hoc chat groups for meat, vegetables, milk -- even "hot dry noodles", a famous Wuhan dish.

More sophisticated shops and compounds have their own mini-app inside WeChat, where residents can choose packages priced by weight before orders are sent in bulk to grocery stores.

In Guo's neighbourhood, for instance, a 6.5-kilogramme (14.3-pound) set of five vegetables, including potatoes and baby cabbage, costs 50 yuan ($7.11).

"You have no way to choose what you like to eat," Guo said. "You cannot have personal preferences anymore."

The group-buying model is also more difficult for smaller communities to adopt, as supermarkets have minimum order requirements for delivery.

"To be honest, there's nothing we can do," said Yang Nan, manager of Lao Cun Zhang supermarket, which requires a minimum of 30 orders.

"We only have four cars," she said, explaining that the store did not have the staff to handle smaller orders.

Another supermarket told AFP it capped its daily delivery load to 1,000 orders per day.

"Hiring staff is difficult," said Wang Xiuwen, who works at the store's logistics division, adding that they are wary about hiring too many outsiders for fear of infection.

Closing off communities has split the city into silos, with different neighbourhoods rolling out controls of varying intensity.

In some compounds, residents have easier access to food -- albeit a smaller selection than normal -- and one woman said her family pays delivery drivers to run grocery errands.

Her compound has not been sealed off either, the 24-year-old told AFP under condition of anonymity, though they are limited to one person leaving at a time.

Some districts have implemented their own rules, such as prohibiting supermarkets from selling to individuals, forcing neighbourhoods to buy in bulk or not at all.

"In the neighbourhood where I live, the reality is really terrible," said David Dai, who is based on the outskirts of Wuhan.

Though his apartment complex has organised group-buying, Dai said residents were unhappy with price and quality.

"A lot of tomatoes, a lot of onions -- they were already rotten," he told , estimating over a third of the food had to be thrown away.

His family must "totally depend" on themselves, added the 49-year-old, who has resorted to saving and drying turnip skins to add nutrients to future meals.

The uncertainty of not knowing when the controls will be lifted is also frustrating, said Ma Chen, a man in his 30s who lives alone.

"I have no way of knowing how much (food) I should buy."

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News Network
May 20,2020

Washington, May 20: The United States recorded another 1,536 coronavirus deaths over the past 24 hours, the Johns Hopkins University tracker said.

That figure, tallied as of 8:30 pm (0030 GMT), raises to 91,845 the total number of COVID-19 deaths in the US.

The US tops the global rankings both for the highest death toll and the highest number of infections, with more than 1.5 million cases.

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