Forget Sandpaper – There’s a Much Bigger Problem with Australian Media, Culture and Sports

On Friday morning, Australia’s test cricket captain Pat Cummins channelled Senator Arnold Vinick from The West Wing and held a “till-they-drop” press conference – standing in front of cameras and microphones and taking questions from journalists until they had none left.

It’s a strategy deployed by politicians trying to respond to pressure over a scandal. The logic is that the only way to make bad headlines and negative press coverage go away is to hold one, lengthy, media event, let journalists exhaust themselves, deal with a day or two of coverage, and then move on.

Unfortunately for Cummins, his responses and statements raised far more questions than they answered, and barely touched on one of the biggest issues raised by Usman Khawaja’s explosive allegations around what happened in South Africa and who had knowledge of the Sandpapergate cheating scandal: the role played by senior coaches, some who remain hugely influential figures in cricket and sports media.