“The lead­er­ship group knew about it…I am not proud of what's hap­pened…It's not with­in the spir­it of the game. It was the lead­er­ship group's idea,” (Steven Smith). Even though Smith, vice-cap­tain David Warn­er and Cameron Ban­croft were aware that us­ing il­le­gal means to win is against the spir­it crick­et and sport in gen­er­al, they were pre­pared to put their ca­reers and char­ac­ter on the line in or­der to have an ad­van­tage over South Africa in the 3rd Test match back on March 24.

Oth­er in­fa­mous ex­am­ples of sport's biggest cheats in­clude: Ben John­son test­ing pos­i­tive for per­for­mance-en­hanc­ing drugs at the 1988 men's 100 me­tres fi­nal at the Seoul Olympics: All Blacks rug­by play­er Andy Haden feign­ing a foul which lat­er be­came known as “the great dive to vic­to­ry” to en­sure that the All Blacks de­feat­ed Wales in 1978; Lance Arm­strong be­ing found guilty of us­ing per­for­mance-en­hanc­ing drugs dur­ing his Tour de France races; the IOC strip­ping Chi­na's Dong Fangx­i­ao of her 2000 Syd­ney Olympic medal for be­ing un­der­age and Mike Tyson be­ing dis­qual­i­fied for bit­ing Evan­der Holy­field's left ear in their 1997 re-match.

So why do ath­letes seek to cheat? Ac­cord­ing to Mau­rice Schweitzer, sports per­son­al­i­ties may en­gage in dis­hon­est acts for sev­er­al rea­sons:

*It may be a sit­u­a­tion. If ath­letes be­lieve that their act/s will go un­no­ticed, the temp­ta­tion to cheat may be­come the “right” choice as Cameron Ban­croft stat­ed “(when) I was sight­ed on the screen and that re­sult­ed in me shov­ing it (tape) down my trousers.”

*If win­ning is part of your iden­ti­ty, then the temp­ta­tions to cheat to stay ahead be­comes strong. Smith ac­knowl­edged, “We saw this game as such an im­por­tant game, not that oth­er games aren't im­por­tant as well, but an op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

*Some ath­letes may seek to jus­ti­fy their ac­tion as an at­tempt to lev­el the play­ing field. So if they be­lieve that oth­er ath­letes or op­po­nents are en­gag­ing in il­le­gal ac­tions, they may re­sort to sim­i­lar ac­tions to 'neu­tral­ize' the sit­u­a­tion.

*Meet­ing per­son­al goals such as win­ning ti­tles, medals and rank­ing po­si­tions may serve as an en­tice­ment to some ath­letes en­gag­ing in dis­hon­est acts.

*In mod­ern sport, some ath­letes may be pres­sured in­to the temp­ta­tions of cheat­ing to main­tain their celebri­ty sta­tus as the 'best' or be­ing among the best in their sport.

Some prac­ti­cal steps to­ward deal­ing with cheats are:

*Pro­mo­tion of eth­i­cal be­hav­iour that is with­in the laws and spir­it of sport.

*Sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions tak­ing im­me­di­ate ac­tion to send a clear sig­nal that un­ac­cept­able be­hav­iour will not be tol­er­at­ed. Crick­et Aus­tralia quick­ly had Steven Smith and vice-cap­tain, David Warn­er stepped down from their lead­er­ship po­si­tion in the mid­dle of the 3rd Test.

The temp­ta­tions of cheat­ing are ubiq­ui­tous as the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of mod­ern sport deep­ens. As such, the pow­ers that be have to be con­stant­ly vig­i­lant and pre­pared to take strong ac­tion where nec­es­sary to deal with the scourge of cheat­ing and dis­hon­esty in sports.