Ball-tampering has happened before. Bowlers and fielders have found different ways to get the ball roughened up on one side.
We've gotten into this situation where integrity is really lacking and that's why I'm glad I'm not coaching. You see we've got a coach at Kentucky who put two schools on probation and he's still coaching. I really don't understand that.
In the game of cricket, a hero is a person who respects the game and does not corrupt the game. The one who doesn't or corrupts the game, they are the villain. They should be punished, and they have been punished in the past.
Too frequently, we hear about coaches and programs willing to win at any cost.
The FA have given me a pat on the back. I've taken violence off the terracing and onto the pitch.
I don't like to be compared to Joe Jackson. because Joe Jackson, I think, took money to throw World Series games. Well, I know I bet on my own team to win. There's pretty much a big difference there, but both of us were wrong.
I'd always felt the Australian cricketers' behaviour had been appalling. Tampering the ball too constitutes poor behaviour.
I've seen elbows that broke eye sockets. I've seen a German goalkeeper just level a French guy. His teammates thought he was dead lying on the ground. This was in 1982 at my first World Cup. But a bite is outside any kind of contact collision: dirty foul play. A bite is a bite.
But there was a hockey game where they didn't even play hockey, they just threw the puck aside and started fighting. I saw that and I thought, 'Oh man, I'm a thug?' So I'm really disappointed in being called a thug.
There has been the negative impact of spot-fixing and match-fixing, but it is the individual player's responsibility to look after that because if a player wants to do that, it is difficult to stop him. It is the individual player's responsibility to play fairly.
When I was a kid, I got sent off for head-butting a referee: I ran 50m to argue a decision, I was shown a red card, and I head-butted him. I'm really not proud of that.
There is no team in the world that doesn't tamper with the ball.
