Cricket Australia created a process that led to winning without repercussions, says review

The ‘Sandpapergate’ incident that involved former Australian skipper Steven Smith, vice-captain David Warner and batsman Cameron Bancroft came as a shocker to audiences worldwide. It set into motion a wide range of emotions and opinions and pointed out everything that's wrong in the Australian cricket culture. While Smith and Warner were handed lengthy one-year sanctions from all forms of international cricket, Bancroft was leveled with a nine-month ban.

"Australian cricket has lost its balance ... and has stumbled badly. The reputation of the game of cricket, as played by men, has been tainted. Women's cricket remains unaffected. The leadership of CA should also accept responsibility for its inadvertent [but foreseeable] failure to create and support a culture in which the will-to-win was balanced by an equal commitment to moral courage and ethical restraint. While good intentions might reduce culpability - they do not lesson responsibility ... especially not for those who voluntarily take on the mantle of leadership. In our opinion, CA's fault is not that it established a culture of 'win at all costs'. Rather, it made the fateful mistake of enacting a program that would lead to 'winning without counting the costs'," the report said.

"It is this approach that has led, inadvertently, to the situation in which cricket finds itself today - for good and for ill. It has also given rise to a series of 'shadow values and principles' - a set of implicit norms that are often driving conduct that is at odds with the requirements of CA's formal Ethical Framework, How We Play, and The Spirit of Cricket," the report further added.