Having a penchant for DIY is not that common among young men these days, especially those on big money.
It should be encouraged, so good on rookie batsman Cameron Bancroft for keeping a handy supply of sandpaper about his person at all times. All the better to help out if a teammate's bat gets a splinter, say.
Why he hid the sandpaper down his pants is anyone's guess. Apart from the obvious risk of unpleasant chafing, it didn’t make for great television. Unless you were not Australian, of course.
His captain Steve Smith added a novel spin to the canon of half apologies that those caught out routinely employ these days. Clearly not taking advice from a crisis communication professional - who would have counselled - “admit it, you drongo, take the rap and it’ll be over in a couple of weeks”. First, he said he took responsibility, then fudged it by saying the plan was cooked up over lunch by a group called the “leadership team”. Then he made matters worse by refusing to say who the leaders were and capped it off neatly by saying he had no intention of resigning.
There was only one winner in this fiasco - the England team, embroiled across the ditch in the worst performance by an English team abroad in the history of the game they invented. They will have been relieved to see the fickle finger of fate moving swiftly onto an even better story. And it allowed their travelling media spinmeisters to reverse 200 years of history and call the Aussies “arrogant”. Result!