Silence the best course for Smith and Bancroft

While Tim Paine has displayed commendable maturity and leadership in coaxing the best out of a wounded Australian team, his efforts have been overshadowed by the media circus over the antics of his predecessor, Steve Smith, ball fettler Cameron Bancroft, and Cricket Australia's designated scapegoat, David Warner.

Both Bancroft, whose nine month suspension ends this weekend, and Smith, who comes back on the market on March 29, are keen to rehabilitate themselves in the eyes of the public and perhaps even in their own.

While Warner's suspension also ends on March 29, the former batting great is on a hiding to nothing after his two former friends and colleagues dropped him in it to make themselves look as innocent as it is possible to do under the circumstances.

The unedifying upshot of Smith's and Bancroft's interviews is that nobody and everybody seems to have been to blame for what went down in Cape Town in March and that neither Smith or Bancroft have learnt much about fair play and loyalty since then.

Both attributed the lion's share of the blame to Warner, the man Cricket Australia bosses effectively told Australian sports lovers they had to hate, while playing down their own responsibility for their own actions.

If any one of the Cape Town three, Smith, Warner or Bancroft, had upheld the most basic standards we expect in schoolyard cricket this wouldn't have happened. On that basis they are all equally responsible.

Bancroft's claim he went along with Warner's scheme because he wanted to "fit in" just doesn't cut it. Bancroft was 25 years old. He was playing in his eighth Test match and had extensive experience representing his state as a professional in his chosen sport.

He is a man who has repeatedly told reporters he had been obsessed with cricket his entire life and could have been expected to have assimilated the standards and mores of the game over his decades as a spectator and a player.

Bancroft's moral failure was his, and his alone. That is equally true for Smith, who failed to live up to his obligations as the Australian captain by not intervening when he became aware dirty dealings were being planned, and for Warner who was allegedly the author of the Cape Town scheme.

While Smith is correct in fingering senior Cricket Australia officials, including then chief executive James Sutherland who reportedly told the team "we don't pay you to play, we pay you to win" in Hobart two years ago, for contributing to the toxic culture that made Cape Town inevitable, he was the captain who gave in to the suits.

This, more than anything else, is proof he does not have the maturity, or the moral stature, to lead Australia at any time in the foreseeable future.

Cricket is a zero sum game. It will always produce winners and losers in equal measure. It is far better to lose, or fight to a draw, under the honourable leadership of a Tim Paine than to sledge and cheat our way to victory under a Steve Smith.