James Sutherland’s general comments about an uncompleted investigation into ball tampering did the ruling body no good and allowed the issue to fester
It was as Cricket Australia as Cricket Australia gets. Process before progress, careful phrasing before straight answers. The chief executive officer, James Sutherland, fronted up on Tuesday evening South African time after a day of anticipation about how Australia’s ball-tampering scandal would be resolved, then postponed resolving it by 24 hours, saying the investigation he had commissioned was incomplete.
Some concrete information of significance did come out. Preliminary findings implicated only the Australia captain, Steve Smith, his deputy David Warner and the junior Cameron Bancroft. The three would be sent home and replaced by Matthew Renshaw, Joe Burns and Glenn Maxwell. Tim Paine would captain.
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