The former Australian captain Ian Chappell is not happy with the fact that Steve Smith has been inducted into the leadership group of the Australian test team again with the role of the vice-captain, while David Warner remains permanently banned from any leadership position.
When the ball-tampering scandal of 2018 was investigated, Warner was found out to be the person behind the plot with Cameron Bancroft, while Steve Smith, who was the captain of the team, had ignored it while having the full knowledge of it.
But, according to Ian Chappell, if somebody in the team is planning to cheat, the captain knows it and he chooses to ignore it, then the captain is equally at fault because the captain is supposed to make sure nobody cheats under his watch.
Ian Chappell said if he had cheated as Australian captain, he would have expected himself to be sacked too
Remembering his own days as the Australian captain, Chappell insisted if he had cheated while holding the position of the Australian captain in any stage, he would have expected the cricket administrators back in the day to sack him from captaincy as well, like Smith was sacked because that’s how such matters should be dealt with.
Chappell just can’t understand how two people (Steve Smith and David Warner), who were part of the same plot, are being treated differently. One person has been banned from captaining the national team for the whole lifetime, while the other person is back in a leadership position. Chappell insists either both get a complete ban or both should be eligible to take over captaincy at any given point.
“Why is Steve Smith looked upon as a different punishment to David Warner? Cheating is cheating, whether it’s big cheating or little cheating, it’s still cheating in my book,” Ian Chappell said while speaking on a radio programme of WWOS.
