In an inversion of the line about comedy being tragedy plus time, the comedy of sandpapergate has, over time (has it not even been a week?!), taken on a somewhat tragic undercurrent. Indeed, as Barney Ronay of the Guardian tweeted, “Cricket Australia has achieved the impossible and made me feel sorry for David Warner.” He might have missed an almost in there somewhere, but there was no doubt that pity was the overriding emotion during Steve Smith’s press conference. Cameron Bancroft’s, too.

Who knows if a David Warner press conference would have elicited the same response, but it seems to me that to only communicate his remorse via social media was either a PR own goal or an indication that he might intend to challenge his sentence. Maybe, as my pal Tom suggested, Warner is wrestling with his inner dialogue. Here’s hoping he’s preparing two press conferences – one as the Reverend and one as the Bull.

Let’s get this straight. It is not unreasonable to wholly condemn Smith, Warner and Bancroft and yet still feel sorry for them. Sympathy doesn’t compromise the fact that they cheated and lied about it twice, doesn’t let them off the hook. Equally, condemnation doesn’t prevent them from feeling remorseful, or for the sense that the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. Perhaps the timing of this is a factor. Cricket Australia (and no doubt their sponsors) might want to make sure the bans are enforced during a home summer.

Faf du Plessis must be glad he’s not Australian. True, he didn’t lie to the umpires or in a press conference, but he has been done twice for ball-tampering, first with the zip of his trousers and then with a mint, and only ever been fined. Again, this doesn’t exonerate the Australians, but it might explain why they failed to grasp the gravity of the situation, why, even before we consider their lack of self-awareness and sense of entitlement, they might not have foreseen such a gulf between the sanctions dished out by the ICC and Cricket Australia.

It boils down to the laws of the game being at odds with the spirit of the game, and it’s an age-old problem for cricket. Ball-tampering is no different. There needs to be a meeting in the middle, whether you believe the sanctions should reflect the moral outrage, or the moral outrage should be dialled down to reflect the tacit admission that everyone is ball-tampering and that reverse swing is not something to be hounded out of the game.

This series will of course be remembered for sandpapergate, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that there has been plenty of excellent cricket – much of it involving reverse swing and justifying my decision to purchase a month’s Sky Sports pass on Now TV. Equally, it shouldn’t be forgotten that there are human beings involved in all this. They are allowed to be remorseful and, yes, they are allowed our sympathy as well as our scorn.

What to make of sandpapergate? Fun, that’s what. It was funny when it happened and the mirth has hardly relented.

It’s cheating, though. It’s just not cricket. It shouldn’t be so funny. But it is. Precisely because it is cricket.

It is said that only cockroaches will survive a nuclear holocaust, but the fabled spirit of cricket is surely equally bombproof, if the surprise and moral outrage at the events in Cape Town are anything to go by. From a family board game to the boardroom of the world’s biggest powers, humans have always been tempted to bend the rules. Why should cricket, even before you delve into its chequered history, be any different? And why should the punishment be so great? After all, Mike Atherton’s sanction for the dirt in the pocket affair in 1994 was purely financial. True, times have changed since then, but, as recently as 2016, Faf du Plessis received nothing more than a fine for mintgate – his second charge of ball-tampering in three years. As Jo Harman of Wisden tweeted shortly before it was officially announced that Steve Smith and David Warner were to be banned for a year and Cameron Bancroft for nine months: “A punishment to fit the reaction to the crime, not the crime itself.”

Maybe it wouldn’t be so funny – and the reaction to it so extreme – had it not been so inept, so lacking in subtlety. How did they think they were going to get away with it? Moreover, once they had been rumbled on the big screen, how did they still think they could get away with it? And how could anyone conclude that credit should be given to Bancroft and Steve Smith for fronting up and confessing at the post-match press conference? What choice did they have? Certainly less choice than Darren Lehmann when he appeared to get on the walkie-talkie to presumably tell Twelfth Man Peter Handscomb to advise Bancroft to dispose of the evidence. How Lehmann has thus far escaped censure is surprising, to say the least. Even if you buy the explanation that the head coach wasn’t part of the “leadership group” (translation: Warner) that cooked up the plot, the evidence suggests that Lehmann was complicit in the cover-up attempt – and he has to be responsible for a team so widely despised and so willing to adopt the win-at-all-costs culture that has ultimately led to this sorry episode.

Let’s face it, maybe it wouldn’t be so funny – and. again, the reaction to it so extreme – if it wasn’t Australia. It was funny enough when Warner, of all people, took exception to something Quinton de Kock said during the first Test in Durban. Funnier still, especially for Stuart Broad, when Lehmann complained of abusive fans. These things always come in threes, I suppose, so it didn’t take long for the footage to emerge of Warner speaking in the immediate aftermath of Faf du Plessis’ ball-tampering in 2016.

“I just know from an Australian perspective: we hold our heads high and I’ll be very disappointed if one of our team members did that.”

Maybe it wouldn’t be so funny if Australia hadn’t been so sanctimonious, if they hadn’t become the self-appointed moral guardians of cricket’s notoriously wonky moral compass, arbiters of the mythical line that only they were allowed to headbutt. As my pal Jim has just pointed out, maybe Lehmann couldnt see what was going on because of all the petards being hoisted. Well, it’s come back to bite them. And the rest of the cricketing world is enjoying the schadenfreude. As Geoffrey Boycott has so often said, “it couldn’t happen to nicer folk.”

Maybe it wouldn’t be so funny if Australia didn’t have to accept that the myth has been busted. Winning is not dependent on being an objectionable hard-nosed bastard. Steve Waugh’s team didn’t win because of mental disintegration. They won because they had Shane Warne. And Glenn McGrath. And Adam Gilchrist. They could have won on mute. Michael Clarke’s team didn’t inflict a whitewash because England were getting ready for a broken arm. They won because they had Mitchell Johnson.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so funny if part of me didn’t necessarily want Australia to reach this conclusion (and maybe they won’t – culture has deep roots). Maybe cricket needs its cartoon villains, needs countries to buy into the sanctimony at the core of a game that can justify plenty of unjustifiable actions while simultaneously stirring up a whole world of moral outrage.

Lastly, a word of warning. Italy, on the back of a huge match-fixing scandal, went on to win the 2006 World Cup. Australia, with a point to prove and fresh leadership could do the same next year – in the World Cup and the Ashes. Enjoy the humour while you can.