Australian international’s remark, saying it’s “self-explanatory” that the bowlers also knew of the illegal use of sandpaper to alter the ball’s condition in the 2018 Cape Town Test, threatens to blow the lid off the Australian script around the ball-tampering incident.
In an interview with the Guardian, while he didn’t take any names, Bancroft said enough to suggest that the likes of Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc were also aware of him scuffing the ball up via sandpaper in the 2018 Test against South Africa.
“Yeah, obviously what I did benefits bowlers and the awareness around that, probably, is self-explanatory…,”
he said when asked whether the bowling attack was aware of the team’s controversial tactics.
Bancroft’s admission is the first time any of the three central figures from the Newlands incident, including the then captain Steve Smith and vice-captain David Warner, has revealed that there was wider knowledge of what’s going on within the team.
Bancroft is currently in the UK preparing for a stint with Durham in the County Championship. His words may just reopen the investigation into the whole matter and put Cummins, Hazlewood and Starc, as well as Mitchell Marsh and Nathan Lyon, under threat in a year where Australia are set to lock horns with England for an Ashes.
Australian cricket was rocked from its bottom the moment Bancroft was caught trying to tamper with the ball through sandpaper during the third Test on the 2018 tour of South Africa. Cricket Australia reacted strongly to the incident and said publicly following an investigation that vice-captain Warner had told Bancroft to rub sandpaper on the ball, with Smith doing nothing to stop that from happening.
Bancroft was handed a nine-month ban, whereas Smith and Warner were suspended for a year. Warner was also banned from donning the captaincy hat for life, with Smith barred from doing so for two years. These were the only three players punished for bringing disgrace to Australian cricket, even though coach Darren Lehmann, high-performance boss Pat Howard, and CA board director Mark Taylor resigned in the months that followed.
Warner and Smith returned to Australian colours in the 2019 summer in England, where they played the 50-over World Cup and the Ashes. Bancroft was part of Australia’s successful quest to retain the urn but has since fallen out of favour.
However, Bancroft’s latest remarks and the public reaction that has followed could force CA to reopen the investigation on the matter as his words are contrary to what the Australian board had revealed after their probe.
CA had made no mention of whether Cummins, Hazlewood, Starc and Lyon were also aware of what’s happening on the field, something former captain Ian Chappell had also looked at with suspicion back in 2019.
Along with Ian Healy and Mark Taylor, Chappell had expressed a lack of trust and confidence in the CA probe, doubting how none outside the tainted trio knew of the sandpaper tactic.
“It almost sounded to me like they were after Warner… If it was going to be a proper probe it would have been far more wide-reaching,”
Chappell had said, accusing CA of treating Warner as a scapegoat in the matter.
Further in his admission, Bancroft said his biggest mistake was that he wanted to be “liked” by his captain and the teammates. Bancroft accepted that he “lost control” of his values in the process.
“I invested too much to the point where I lost control of my values. What had become important to me was being liked, being well-valued, feeling really important to my teammates, like I was contributing something by using sandpaper on a cricket ball,”
he said.
