Australia take on South Africa in the first Test of their three-match series, starting on Friday at Kingsmead in Durban. The two teams occupy the top spots in the World Test Championship (WTC) standings, with South Africa entering the series as defending champions after beating Australia in the final of the previous cycle. The series marks their first Test meeting in South Africa since the infamous Sandpapergate tour of 2018, during which Australia’s Cameron Bancroft , David Warner and then-captain Steve Smith were found guilty of ball-tampering.
Smith is the only survivor from that controversial tour, which cost him his captaincy, with Warner now retired and Bancroft no longer in Australia’s plans. As the two teams gear up for the series opener in Durban, Alvin Naicker, who was overseeing the broadcast of the infamous Cape Town Test, made a candid admission about how a stroke of serendipity helped expose Australia’s plans. “Coverage of rugby and football is very coordinated. It’s camera one and two, then when the ball is dead you tell the story with close-up shots,” he explained. “The first Test in Durban spiralled out of control in terms of behaviour, then in Port Elizabeth for the second Test, there were still some fireworks going on. We still didn’t understand. “When he threw the ball on, he put his hand in his pocket. The cameraman – and these are big, big lens cameras – he zoomed into his pocket. The slow-mo operator looked at it, spooled it back and forth, then zoomed in and could see the yellow spot.”
Because he was not shining the ball on his pants, but he was rubbing the ball on his palm, “First it was on his pants, then the next ball, the cameraman happened to stay on Bancroft. Naicker recalled how the 2018 series got off to an ill-tempered start, but admitted that the local broadcasters were not on the lookout for cheating by the Australians, despite the shenanigans of the first two Tests.
“The way the Australians were caught was an absolute fluke,” said Nicker, as quoted by the BBC . “No one mentioned anything to me,” says Naicker. “The ball went to the wicketkeeper, then to Bancroft and he was shining the ball,” says Naicker.
Bancroft was caught hiding the sandpaper in his trousers, a moment that Naicker and his team replayed on the big screen. “The cameraman recorded it. It still wasn’t live, we played a replay. In the aftermath of the incident, Smith broke down in tears during a live television interview and accepted responsibility. Bancroft, meanwhile, was banned from international and domestic cricket for nine months.
However, that was not enough to spare him a 12-month ban from international and domestic cricket, in addition to being stripped of the captaincy. Warner was handed a similar 12-month ban and was also barred from holding any leadership role in Australian cricket.
“When Bancroft looked up at the screen and saw it, he removed it and put it in his jocks,” says Naicker.
