Former Australia Cricket Captain Tim Paine Claims South Africa Also Engaged in Ball-Tampering

MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Former Australia cricket captain Tim Paine has accused South Africa of ball-tampering in the match that immediately followed the infamous 2018 Newlands test which saw the Australian team engulfed in the ‘Sandpaper-gate’ scandal.

Paine, who stepped down from the captaincy late last year and withdrew from cricket for nearly a year, has made the comments in his autobiography, “The Price Paid,” which was released on Tuesday.

Australia suspended former captain Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft after Bancroft was caught on camera with a piece of sandpaper on the field during the Cape Town test of the South Africa tour.

However, Paine said he then saw South Africa ball-tampering in the next (fourth) test in Johannesburg, pulling apart the seam of the ball.

“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.”

Paine alleges match broadcasters covered it up.

“The television director, who had played an active role in catching out Cam, immediately pulled the shot off the screen. 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. But the footage got lost. As it would.”

The 37-year-old is also the first player to lift the lid on the controversial Cape Town Test. He insists there was no meeting around a plan for Cameron Bancroft to use sandpaper on the ball during the third Test between Australia and South Africa. Instead, he says, his heart sank when he saw replays showing Bancroft hiding the sandpaper in his pants.

He writes: “I was thinking ‘what the f**k’. A sense of dread came over us all.”

Paine stresses in the new book that ball tampering was fairly common in cricket at that time; which is similar to claims that South Africa’s Faf du Plessis (Proteas’ captain at the time) is reported to make in his upcoming book, ‘Faf: Through Fire’.

Paine does admit however that using sandpaper was “next level” and “shameful”.

The Australian said it felt like his team were “provoked” during the series, with abuse from the crowd aimed at some players’ families, particularly David Warner’s…which he says led to the confrontation with Quinton de Kock after the South African allegedly made a “vile” comment about Warner’s wife. Paine says he feels his team let Warner down and didn’t support him enough.

Du Plessis says in his book that the South Africans suspected the Aussies of ball tampering from before the Newlands match, and quips: “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.”

South Africa is heading to Australia in December for the first Test series between the teams since the 2018 debacle.