The Australian cricket team was caught on camera trying to cheat by tampering with the ball.

It is one of those incidents that will forever haunt the sport and this team.

It has put cricket, long considered to be a gentleman’s game with a relatively untarnished reputation, into disrepute and the country isn’t having a bar of it.

Fans of the sport are outraged at how coaches could allow this to happen, how the captain came to this conclusion and how the players let it happen.

It’s been called the country’s biggest sporting scandal and our biggest sporting shame.

But is it, really?

We can think of other incidents off the top of our head that would compete with this for that title – Dawn Fraser stealing the flag in Tokyo, Shane Warne’s 12-month ban, Essendon’s supplement taking investigation and Melbourne Storm’s salary cap.

Our sporting scandals usually involve someone taking drugs, alleged sexual assaults or a salary cap breach.

But outright cheating, we haven’t dealt with that for a while.

We should also mention that this incident with the Australian team took place during a match with two other convicted ball tamperers on the field in the South African team.

The offence itself is seen as somewhat of a misdemeanour.

But it is the shame, the intention and the poor execution of it that Australia is having trouble forgiving.

It was the intention behind the action, the devious way it was attempted to be hidden and their poor excuse for it.

“Oh well, yeah, we just thought...”

Come on, guys. Do better than that.

It now raises questions of which individuals should be held responsible (coach, captain and/or players) and what their punishment should be.

We are not saying that if you are going to cheat you should work better at not getting caught.

The message is always … don’t cheat.

But this is a national sporting team of the highest regard that has followed in a long list of well-respected players who would never dream of such an act.

Part of the Australian way is winning with pride or losing with a bit of dignity and that wasn’t seen this week.