Last Updated on 3 years ago by Charbel Coorey
Cricket News: South Africa tampered with the ball in 2018 Test series – Tim Paine | Paine says South Africa tampered with ball in 2018
Former Australia skipper Tim Paine has accused the South Africa side of tampering the ball in the immediate aftermath of the ‘Sandpaper’ gate scandal in the 2018 series between the two sides. The wicketkeeper-batsman has also denied of any team meeting around the use of sandpaper by Cameron Bancroft to tinker with the condition of the ball in the first Test of that series.
In his new autobiography ‘The Price Paid’, Paine explained that one of the South African players was having a crack at the ball at mid-off during the fourth Test in Johannesburg.
Television director deleted footage of South Africa tampering with the ball in 2018 – Paine
He revealed that the shot of this was displayed on the big screen and that the Aussie players took it up with the umpire thereafter. However, the television director allegedly deleted that clip shortly afterwards.
“Think about that. After everything that had happened in Cape Town, after all the headlines and bans and carry on. 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. The television director, who had played an active role in catching out Cam (Bancroft), immediately pulled the shot off the screen,” Paine writes in his new tell-tale.
He adds, “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.”
Paine has reiterated that it would have been better for the trio of David Warner, Steve Smith and Bancroft if the team would have stood up with them during those times.
“Would it have worked out better for those three players if we had owned it as a team? I think it would have,” the 37-year-old has opined in his book. Paine has returned to first-class cricket with Tasmania in the Marsh Sheffield Shield in October after a long gap of close to one-and-a-half-years.
