They have received lengthy bans and their names are being rubbed in the dirt, just as if they were cricket balls themselves, and their shine, their escutcheon, is being excoriated.
Ball tampering, while emphatically against the laws of the game, is not that unusual. New Zealanders, Indians, Pakistanis, Englishmen and South Africans have been caught doing the deed. In November 2016 South African captain Faf Du Plessis was found guilty after sucking on mints and using his saliva to shine the ball in a test in Australia. He was fined his match fee and given three penalty points. Against Pakistan in 2013 he was fined half his match fee for scuffing the ball on the zip of his trousers.
So, even if helping to shine the ball does not seem as heinous as roughing it up, the whirlwind that descended on the Australian captain Smith and deputy Warner must have shocked them. Given the past feeble responses to misdemeanours by cricket authorities, they would have expected only a short-term and manageable punishment if they happened to be caught.
Instead, even Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull joined the chorus of condemnation. The matter was a ''shocking affront'' and ''terrible disgrace''.
The outrage was extreme in large part because of the Australian team's arrogant bullying and its hypocrisy. Recent nastiness in tests has involved India, England and now South Africa, and every time the common denominator was Australia. Warner himself, after Du Plessis' miscreance with mints, pontificated that the Australians ''hold our heads high'' and he would ''be very disappointed if one of our team members did that''.
Not only, according to some reports, did he instigate the plan to doctor the ball but the most junior member of the team was left in the lens firing line to be caught on camera.
The Australian team's record is such there is simply no sympathy left to draw on. This final brick broke the donkey's back. The strutting peacocks are receiving their long overdue comeuppance.
Smith might be Australia's best batsman since Donald Bradman, and Warner a brilliant, belligerent belter of the ball. But they have amplified an Australian cricketing culture so rotten and so disrespectful that even within their own country disgust is rampant.
The players picked a particularly poor period to cheat. Their attitudes can be placed against the current worldwide disgust with misogyny, insolence and lack of integrity. The behaviour of United States President Donald Trump has prompted widespread detestation with boyish bravado and swagger, bad behaviour and blatant dishonesty. The #MeToo movement has provoked a questioning of mores and attitudes that allow, and encourage, abuse and disrespect.
There is a desire and searching for integrity in the face of repugnant behaviour, a yearning for respectfulness and consideration.
In this context of 2018, the Australians are dinosaur throwbacks to the 1970s, inheriting the macho manner of Rod Marsh, Dennis Lillee and Ian Chappell and taking it further. Marsh himself once mocked a match against Otago when he thought it would be amusing to endeavour not to score any runs for half an hour.
So when the bullies of world cricket stupidly and contemptuously break the laws and are caught with tape down the trousers of one of their number, reactions are merciless.
Bravo to that. Many have had enough of puerile and pathetic conduct, and the Australian cricketers have epitomised that. Enough is enough.
Play hard? Absolutely. But display decency and decorum, and do not cheat. It has no place in cricket and no place in life.
