Cricket. It’s the biggest thing to come out of England after colonialism and Ed Sheeran, and now, if you believe the headlines, it’s in crisis.

Australian cricket is experiencing it’s most disgraceful moment since the 1981 one day match between Australia and New Zealand, when Australian captain Greg Chappell told his brother, Trevor, to bowl the last ball of the match underarm — a move described by the then Prime Minister of New Zealand Robert Muldoon as “the most disgusting incident I can recall in the history of cricket”.

The latest scandal, which occurred over the weekend in South Africa, has already seen Australian captain Steve Smith and vice-captain David Warner stood down from their roles, pending a broader investigation by Cricket Australia — the sport’s governing body. Politicians on all sides of politics have already weighed in on the scandal, and even if you don’t give a shit about cricket it’s a story that’s going to dominate headlines for a while.

Like all Australians, I can't quite believe what we saw last night. For the sake of all cricket lovers I hope Cricket Australia make it clear that this behaviour is unacceptable #SAvAUS #Auspol

— Bill Shorten (@billshortenmp) March 25, 2018

So here’s everything you need to know.

What’s Ball Tampering?

If you don’t know anything about cricket here’s how it works in a sentence: one player (a bowler) bowls a ball at another player (the batsman) who tries to hit it. There’s slightly more to the full Laws of Cricket (yes that is their real, and extremely pretentious, name) than that but at it’s core it’s a sport about hitting balls with a bat.

Bowlers can either bowl really fast in an attempt to bamboozle the batsman, or they can try and spin the ball so it bounces at hard to predict angles. That’s what everyone’s favourite playboy/walking meme Shane Warne was good at.

But pace bowlers (the ones who bowl fast) have another trick up their sleeve. They can deploy a tactic called swing bowling in which the ball ‘swings’ in the air either towards or away from the batsman, catching them off guard.

A lot of people unfamiliar with cricket often wonder why players regularly spit on the ball and rub it on their pants, leaving unseemly red stains all over their crisp whites. Here’s what’s going on: the bowling side is attempting to polish up one side of the ball while leaving the other sound rough. Thanks to physics that creates a particular kind of air flow that makes the ball swing even harder. That technique is called reverse spin.

Now using a bit of spit and your pants to polish the ball is within the rules. But it’s outside of the rules to rub any other products or items on the ball to try and induce reverse swing. That’s known as ball tampering, and it’s what the Australian cricket team admitted to in South Africa.

Here’s How It Happened

We have a pretty good idea of how the Australian team cheated thanks to camera footage from the match and comments made by Smith, the team’s captain, and Cameron Bancroft, the rookie player who was caught tampering with the ball.

Australia was feeling the pressure in the third test match against South Africa and were desperate to secure a victory so they would still have a chance of winning the series. According to Smith, during a lunch break he and other members of the team’s “leadership group” (he didn’t name who they were, but it’s likely to include vice-captain David Warner at least) hatched a plan to tamper with the ball to try and give the bowlers a bit of help.

Bancroft, one of the freshest members of the team, was nearby when that discussion was happening. He denied that he was pressured by Smith to take any specific action and told reporters he decided to take matters into his own hand and do the actual cheating. He took a piece of yellow tape from his kit and during the match, unbeknownst to the opposing team, he rubbed some loose gravel from the cricket pitch on it — effectively MacGyvering some homemade sandpaper.

The idea was to rub the roughened tape on the cricket ball, thus increasing the chances of reverse swing. The problem for Bancroft is the whole thing was caught on video.

After Bancroft finished roughing up the ball he put the tape back in his pocket. What he didn’t know was that TV cameras had been replaying that moment over and over again, and the commentators had already suggested ball tampering. But the saga wasn’t over yet.

When Australian coach Darren Lehmann realised Bancroft had been busted, he got on the blower to Peter Handscomb, another player who was sitting on the bench.

Handscomb then ran onto the field to confer with Bancroft.

We don’t know what Handscomb said but it’s a fair bet it had to do with the ball tampering because soon after Bancroft tried to hide the yellow tape in his underpants.

Bancroft thought he’d gotten away with it because when the umpires came to question him he produced a sunglasses cover from his pocket and claimed that’s what he was using to rub the ball.

Unfortunately for Bancroft the footage of him stashing the tape in his pants was also replayed over and over again and the whole plan came undone.

He and Smith then fronted up at a press conference later that day and confirmed they had cheated, which everyone else had already pretty much figured out.

What’s The Fallout Been?

The cheating incident has sent shockwaves across the cricketing world. Not just because such obvious examples of ball tampering are pretty rare, but also because it’s so unusual for the Australian team to be involved in something like this — especially considering it was orchestrated by the captain himself. Australian cricketers have a reputation for playing the game pretty by the book (aside from the underarm saga), and they’re also well-known for pointing the finger at other teams.

In fact, back in 2014 vice-captain David Warner was fined for falsely accusing South Africa of ball tampering. You can only really accuse other people of cheating when your record is squeaky clean though, and unfortunately for Australia our international reputation is now absolutely cooked.

Bancroft has been fined by the International Cricket Council for his role in the cheating affair. Smith has been faced and banned for one match, while both he and Warner have been stood down by Cricket Australia from their leadership roles. Some international cricket players, including Indian spin legend Harbhajan Singh, have lashed the ICC for the punishment, accusing it of being too soft.

wow @ICC wow. Great treatment nd FairPlay. No ban for Bancroft with all the evidences whereas 6 of us were banned for excessive appealing in South Africa 2001 without any evidence and Remember Sydney 2008? Not found guilty and banned for 3 matches.different people different rules

— Harbhajan Turbanator (@harbhajan_singh) March 25, 2018

However, the ICC ruling is unlikely to be the end of the story.

Former Australian cricketers have savaged Smith, including former captain Michael Clarke. There are also calls for Smith and Warner to be dismissed from the team. Cricket Australia is still figuring out what to do there’s no straightforward path ahead. They could sack Smith and lose the greatest batsman since Don Bradman. On the other hand, if he gets off too lightly they are potentially sending a signal to cricketers and future cricketers that it’s fine to cheat as long as you’re good at the sport.

Australian cricket truly is in crisis, and this stage it doesn’t like we’re going to be out of it for a while yet. In the meantime it’s worth revisiting the words of the late, great Richie Benaud. His response to the underarm incident absolutely nails the feeling many Australians have today regarding the ball tampering incident.

No one could have put it better: