Cricket Australia (CA) has asked batsman Cameron Bancroft if he has new information on the 2018 Cape Town scandal in the wake of his suggestion that the team’s bowlers were aware of the ball-tampering tactics.
The former Test opener was banned for nine months for his role in the incident, dubbed “Sandpaper-gate”, while then-captain Steve Smith and his deputy David Warner were stripped of their leadership positions and suspended for a year.
A CA investigation at the time cleared the rest of the team and support staff of wrongdoing or knowledge of the plan to alter the condition of the ball, but Bancroft suggested that was not the case in interview with The Guardian on Friday.
“There was obviously a thorough investigation into that incident,” Ben Oliver, CA’s Executive General Manager of National Teams, told reporters yesterday. “We’ve maintained all the way through that if anyone has any new information relating to that incident, that we encourage people to come forward and discuss that with Cricket Australia. Our integrity team have reached out to Cam... to remind him if he does have any new information in addition to what his input was into the original investigation, there is an avenue for him to do that.”
Bancroft was caught on camera trying to tamper with the condition of the ball using sandpaper during Australia’s test against South Africa in Cape Town. He admitted he lied in a subsequent news conference, saying he had used sticky tape covered in dirt to change the ball’s condition.
Smith later admitted the plan to use sandpaper had been hatched by the team’s leadership group. “Obviously what I did benefits bowlers and the awareness around that, probably, is self-explanatory,” Bancroft told The Guardian, when asked if Australia’s bowlers were aware of what he was doing.
When pressed further to clarify if the bowlers knew, he replied: “Uh... yeah, look, I think, yeah, I think it’s pretty probably self-explanatory.”
Meanwhile, team’s former bowling coach David Saker said the 2018 ball-tampering scandal will haunt Australian cricket forever, much like the infamous underarm delivery of 40 years ago.
Saker was Australia’s bowling coach when Cameron Bancroft caught trying to rough up the ball with sandpaper during the third Test against South Africa. While refusing to be drawn on who knew what, Saker said “the finger-pointing is going to go on and on and on”.
“It’s like the underarm, it’s never going to go away,” he said, referring to a 1981 incident when Trevor Chappell bowled underarm to ensure New Zealand lost a one-day match at the Melbourne cricket Ground. The notorious delivery is still cited in New Zealand and in cricketing circles as a prime example of unsporting conduct.
Saker added: “There was a lot of people to blame. It could have been me to blame, it could have been someone else. It could have been stopped and it wasn’t, which is unfortunate. Cameron’s a very nice guy. He’s just doing it to get something off his chest ... He’s not going to be the last.”