A recap on the Cricket Australia debacle - the one thing we're not talking about

The mainstream media over the last few days has ripped into former Australian cricket captain Steve Smith, co captain David Warner and former player Cameron Bancroft.

Today the trio fronted up to the media upon returning to Australia from Cape Town in South Africa.

David Warner issued a statement posted as a note on Twitter, meanwhile Cameron Bancroft and Steve Smith both fronted the media. Both were visibly shaken with former captain, Steve Smith the most distraught of the pair of them. He was in tears for most of the press conference and barely held it together. He apologised several times and said he hopes he can come back from this and represent Australia once again. Whether or not he can remains to be seen. Only time will tell.

I won't harp on about how they've embarrassed Australia and played outside of the cricket rules because we've had wall to wall coverage of that this week; and I won't talk about how they've been banned from playing and representing Australia for 12 months in the case of Steve Smith and David Warner; and nine in the case of Cameron Bancroft. I also won't talk about their media conferences in great detail because we can make up our own minds about what they said and how they should be treated following those conferences. It appears that based on the media conferences, Steve Smith is the only one who truly understands the magnitude of what happened on the cricket field and understands that, in his words, "playing is an honour and representing Australia is an honour".

Instead I'll talk about why Australians and the rest of the world got so angry about what happened last weekend in Cape Town.

Like Sydney Morning Herald columnist Waleed Aly said in a column he wrote today, it was such a big deal to us because of how we think about ourselves and our national pride. It wasn't a case of tampering with a ball, because let's face it, on its own, ball tampering is not a big deal. It's about the fact that it's cheating and we, as Australians, are better than that. It's about the fact that we don't cheat. Yes we sledge other players but we don't cheat and that's not how we want the rest of the world to perceive us. There are nations that you would expect cheating from but Australia isn't one of them. Yes, there was the underarm incident in 1961 BUT that was permitted according to the rules of the time.  If we wanted to be perceived as cheats then sponsors wouldn't have withdrawn their sponsorship, which is so far around $24 million, and that is going to make a serious dent on Cricket Australia's books. We'll come back to that point later on though.

Now moving on from the players concerned, there is one thing that has been missed by both the public and the media and I want to draw attention to it. There has been a noticeable absence of women sports commentators and columnists discussing the cricket debacle.

I understand that men's cricket rakes in more dollars than women's cricket and that women's cricket has only really been going the last 20 years but today barely gets any coverage. I understand that as a result there is a smaller pool of female cricket commentators (normally ex players) to choose from like there are with men's cricket, but surely there would be some women with opinions on the matter other than myself. She hosts The Footy Show, so why haven't other programs brought her in for commentary? Broadcaster Lisa Wilkinson is another one who could have been brought in to talk about it given she is one of the hosts on The Project. Yet she hasn't been asked, or offered commentary either. Australian women's cricketer, Ellyse Perry who is very prominent and well known hasn't been sought for comment from the cricketing world either. Don't get me wrong, it's great hearing from cricketers such as Shane Warne, Michael Clarke and Steve Waugh but it seems it's only men who are speaking about it.

So my first is, why aren't women being asked for opinions on cricket and offered sports commentary gigs? Why have women's voices been noticeably absent from the conversation going on in Australia right now about our men's cricket team? And my third question is, why aren't more women and girls playing the sport? And yes, a kid I played cricket for about five years with my dad as the coach (and we won every single game, other than a match that we had been winning, until it was rained off - when we replayed the team, another of the best in the city, we lost the match, that was the only match we lost). My last question is, if women aren't playing sports like men do, then why is that and what can be done to encourage girls and women into sports?

I hope that cricket's reputation isn't damaged for long and that Australian boys AND girls take up the sport because it's a great sport, and it's one that anyone can play, and I for one will be taking it up again next season.

Cricket is a brilliant sport and hopefully its reputation recovers with honest, fair play that adheres to the rules.