Ball-tampering in Cape Town led to sacking of captain Steve Smith and two other players and a softening of macho culture
To some, scratching a cricket ball would be innocuous rather than infamous. But when the Australian batsman Cameron Bancroft did it during a Test match in Cape Town, the cricket world lit up. At the height of a viciously tempered series he used bright yellow sandpaper to rough up the leather in an attempt to aid his bowlers. Ball-tampering is a fact of cricket, but no international player had been caught so blatantly, using a foreign object smuggled on to the field. This time the offence was caught in lush high-definition by South African television.
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Written by Geoff Lemon
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2018/dec/24/cricket-australia-ball-tampering-steve-smith-sandpaper under the title “Flashpoints of 2018: sandpaper fiasco forces Australia to atone”. Bolchha Nepal is not responsible or affiliated towards the opinion expressed in this news article.
