In the 2018 Cape Town Test, Australian batter Cameron Bancroft was caught on camera attempting to change the surface of the red ball using a piece of Sandpaper, creating an uproar in the cricketing world.
Eight years later, the former South African captain, who was leading the South African team in that game, has opened up on the incident, saying that he felt sorry for the Australian batter for the media trial he was subjected to.
“Bancroft, and honestly, my first instincts with him were, I felt sorry for the guy. When I saw him, first of all, he did that, and I was like, ‘Shame.’ He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know how to get the ball to reverse swing, because taking a piece of sandpaper out of your pocket with cameras, it’s not the most clever thing to do,” Faf told former South Africa pacer Vernon Philander on the ‘Beyond the Boundary’ podcast.
“Then it was that whole incident. I mean, we were sitting after the day’s play. And we were like, the team is taking like an hour before the press conference has to start. So we’re like, why are they taking so long? What are they doing? And then they issued that statement. And that statement was just like putting blitz under a fire and just going there. And they were saying, no one knows about it. The captain had no idea. The coach had no idea. And everyone was just like, well, hang on, what’s going on here? Everyone knows what goes on in a dressing room,” he added.
After the incident, the then Australian captain Steve Smith admitted to the allegations. David Warner was identified as the senior player who played a pivotal role in the whole plan while Bancroft carried out the act.
Cricket Australia (CA) was quick to ban Smith and Warner for 12 months while Bancroft received a nine-month suspension. Faf reckoned that CA should have handled the matter properly and stood up for their players.
