“Water is for fishes,” said Michael Holding to Gaurav Kapur when the latter offered him some water. The beauty of Holding is something he always portrayed through his blowing: that innate bluntness. Nicknamed “Whispering Death” because of his nonchalant run-up, the entire being of the legendary West Indian exudes illuminating candor.

Speaking to Mumbai Mirror on the ongoing ball-tampering saga, the former pacer, who took 249 wickets in 113 Test innings, said that Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft were wrong to hold a press conference and spill all the beans right then and there because it made them susceptible to chaos.

In the end, that is exactly what happened since Steve Smith’s words at the press conference were the onset of Australia’s dark days in modern cricket as it opened up a maelstrom wormhole in which Australian cricket now finds itself lingering.

“There have been much worse incidents in cricket but I think it was handled poorly by all those concerned,” Holding said.

“First of all, there should never have been a press conference. What you do is put out a statement admitting culpability but not subjecting yourself to all the questions. There was something done to the ball which was obvious. It should have been ‘yes, we have made a mistake. At the moment, we are very sorry about it but we’re in the middle of a Test. We’ll address it at the end of the match’.”

In the press conference, Steven Smith admitted to tampering the ball and also added that the “leadership group” made the plan during the lunch break and put Cameron Bancroft as the doer of the plan.

This is where Australia were wrong, according to Michael Holding, as he believes that this opened a can of worms, from which there was no return.

“Then because they agreed to the press conference, they made a lot of mistakes there in. I don’t know the exact words used but the captain said there was a senior group of cricketers who made the decision after a meeting which shows premeditation. Again, a severe mistake because the captain and the vice-captain are only a part of the senior group, that implicates others.”

After the words came out Steve Smith’s mouth, Cricket Australia CEO James Sutherland flew to South Africa after sending two officials to carry out an investigation. As it turned out, only Steve Smith, Cameron Bancroft and David Warner—who was found out to be the instigator of the plan—were involved in the scandalous plan.

This is something that irked Michael Holding, who finds the notion of Darren Lehmann not knowing anything about the plan as ludicrous.

“When you say the coach does not know, that seems to be total rubbish because the video evidence suggests otherwise. When he realised Bancroft (Cameron) had been caught, he used the walkie-talkie to tell the twelfth man to alert (Bancroft).

“The look on his (Darren Lehmann’s) face was not of disgust to see what had taken place but one of a schoolboy caught with his hands in a cookie jar. If I were the coach and I realised what had been happening by seeing all that was taking on the giant screen, my reaction would have been one of disgust. That was not his reaction.”

The reason for not involving Lehmann’s name in the quagmire was a sort of a defense mechanism to limit the damage caused by the press conference of doom from Steve Smith, something that Michael Holding himself resonates while also stating that the response to it is not an exaggeration and that the aforementioned media conference should have been avoided.

“They didn’t handle it very well at all. James Sutherland, Cricket Australia CEO, came all the way to South Africa. He could have saved his cricket board some money because his press conference didn’t say anything that everybody didn’t know, except for saying the coach wasn’t involved and I have dealt with that aspect already.