[imagesource: AP]

No matter how many runs they score during their careers, the likes of David Warner and Steve Smith will never escape the shadow of 2018’s  Sandpapergate.

Cameron Bancroft, the fall guy with the sandpaper shoved down his pants, has alluded to the fact that the bowlers (who have always denied any knowledge of what was going on) also knew what he was up to.

The Australian test team have tried their utmost to move on, installing Tim Paine as skipper before he was dropped for being a serial texting sex pest, despite being married.

However, Paine’s autobiography, as well as former Proteas skipper Faf du Plessis’ autobiography, have reignited tensions between the sides.

Du Plessis, who also called out former teammate Daryll Cullinan for being a doos, writes in Faf: Through Fire that the Proteas suspected Australia of ball-tampering before the Sandpapergate scandal.

Here’s Fox Sports:

…du Plessis writes that the South African team started spying on Australian fielders through binoculars in the changeroom, such was their suspicions of potential ball tampering.

He claimed that South Africa suspected Australia of ball tampering from the first Test of the series…

“We suspected that someone had been nurturing the ball too much to get it to reverse so wildly, and we watched the second Test at St George’s through binoculars, so that we could follow the ball more closely while Australia was fielding.

“When we noticed that the ball was going to David Warner quite often – our changing room must have looked like a birdwatching hide as we peered intently through our binoculars.”

Du Plessis said that the huge difference in reverse swing achieved by the likes of Mitchell Starc in the first Test in Durban and the final Test in Johannesburg, after the Ozzies had already been pinged for cheating, is all the proof he needs.

The former Proteas skipper has himself been found guilty of ball-tampering and admitted this, saying “I’m not mentioning this from atop a high horse.”

He also said he had sympathy for Smith and Bancroft, who both received lengthy bans, but made no mention of Warner.

Sources inside the Ozzie team say they deny any allegations of cheating outside of the time they were clearly caught doing so, with Usman Khawaja pointing out that the Proteas seamers also enjoyed plenty of reverse swing that series.

Taking things a step further, Paine, who once admitted to soiling himself during an Ashes test, flat-out accused the Proteas of ball-tampering in his autobiography, The Price Paid, which was released today.

He says that in the test in Johannesburg, which came directly after Cape Town’s Sandpapergate drama, the Proteas cheated.

Below from Reuters:

“Think about that. After everything that had happened in Cape Town, after all the headlines and bans and carry on,” the wicketkeeper wrote.

“I was standing at the bowlers’ end in the next test when a shot came up on the screen of a South African player at mid-off having a huge crack at the ball… We went to the umpires about it, which might seem a bit poor, but we’d been slaughtered and were convinced they’d been up to it since the first test,” he wrote.

“But the footage got lost. As it would.”

There is no doubt that home broadcasters can play a role in who gets caught for what. SuperSport’s broadcasting team admitted that it aimed to catch the Ozzies tampering and you only need to look at The Rugby Championship for evidence that this is still alive and well.

Every possible incident of foul play against the home side is repeatedly broadcast in the hopes that an official might take action.

However, South Africa won that fourth test by 492 runs. The Australian team’s spirit was well and truly broken. The cricket world’s eyes were lasered in every time any fielder had the ball in his hands.

To ball tamper in that scenario would be nothing short of idiotic.

This isn’t the first time these accusations have entered the public eye. In 2020, umpire Ian Gould wrote in his autobiography, Gunner: My Life In Cricket, about an incident at the end of day one of the Johannesburg test:

“At the end of day one I was walking off, put my hand in my pocket and one of the [lolly] wrappers fell out,” Gould wrote. “I pushed it down a stump hole with my boot on one of the pitches on the edge of the square and thought nothing more of it.

“The following morning, the Australian bowlers were doing their warm-ups on the same wicket. You can probably guess what happened next. A few minutes later, their bowling coach David Saker knocked on our door and came in. ‘We’ve got ’em!’ he said. By that, we took it to mean that my sweet wrapper he had in his hand was the evidence that the South Africans had been applying saliva from Werther’s Originals to get the ball to swing on what was another flat deck.

At that stage, Gould reached into his pocket and rolled a couple of lollies along the table towards Saker.

Gould called it “a ridiculous accusation to make on the flimsiest of evidence” and accused the Ozzies of being paranoid.

The Proteas are far from saints and the dark art of changing the condition of the ball to suit your bowlers likely continues to this day with every test match side.

However, Paine’s talk of it happening in the test following the Sandpapergate, coupled with Gould’s account of the incident, makes it look like the sourest of grapes from the former Ozzie skipper.

[sources:foxsports&reuters]