Tuffey suffers from inquiry's glare

Daryl Tuffey was fined $1000 (US$740) this week for acting against the interests of New Zealand Cricket after he failed to destroy promptly a digital film. Despite doing little else wrong, Tuffey suffered unnecessarily after his case was made public.

The facts are simple. Tuffey got caught on video with a woman, doing what adults who fancy one another do, got filmed doing it and, after he realised he had been recorded, didn't act quickly enough to remove the evidence. NZC said Tuffey had acted against their interests and committed serious misconduct, which he admitted to.

It would seem an open and shut case: set the penalty and get on with playing cricket. Yet the formal inquiry dragged on for a week and became the latest hot topic for talkback radio and office gossip. The media widely reported that the matter involved Tuffey and a woman, and a logical inference from the serious nature of the inquiry was that whatever went on was not consensual. But Hugh Rennie QC, who conducted the investigation, found the contact between Tuffey and the woman was consensual and discontinued by them voluntarily.

Mr Rennie heard the matter on March 8 and interviewed further witnesses before releasing his report on Tuesday. The need for more questions was odd as Tuffey admitted the charge at the hearing. If it was a criminal matter, the charge would have been read and Tuffey would have been asked to plead. If he admitted the charge, as he did in this case, he would then have been sentenced.

Mr Rennie said he received extensive information from people with direct knowledge of the events and that Tuffey had openly and frankly answered all matters raised. "The formal allegation made by NZ Cricket is admitted by Mr Tuffey," Mr Rennie said in the report. "He took this action immediately and voluntarily."

The last sentence is significant. The implication from Mr Rennie's report is that Tuffey admitted his guilt when the charge was laid before the hearing. If NZC wanted independent input from that situation Mr Rennie's role could have been merely to sentence Tuffey rather than put him on trial.

The strangest aspect of the report was that it didn't spell out what the serious misconduct was. Instead of finding the information in the first paragraph, the best description is at the end of the findings where Mr Rennie said Tuffey "acknowledged to me that his conduct was serious misconduct in terms of his agreement with NZ Cricket" and that "from the inquiries I have made, he has acted correctly in making these admissions". What the matter is really about - Tuffey acting contrary to the interests of NZC - is buried in Mr Rennie's analysis of the gravity of the offence on page 3.

Although Tuffey did little wrong, the $1000 fine is probably justified as he admitted the offence. If his actions were at the serious end of the scale then what penalty would await a player whose misconduct is of a minor nature? The real problem lies in the ambit of a crime. Just as the basic criminal charge of disorderly behaviour catches even the most harmless of activity, it is unavoidable that the expression "contrary to NZC's interests" will pick up almost any incident.

There are no winners here. Tuffey has suffered public humiliation far beyond what his actions justified. NZC may cop flak for bringing up an allegation that the public cannot be faulted for struggling to see what Tuffey did wrong.