An Australian Cricket Ball Tampering Scandal With Steve Smith, David Warner & Cameron Bancroft:
The Sandpapergate scandal shocked the whole cricket world with big names like David Warner and Steve Smith. They also faced huge punishments for ball-tampering that put a big question mark on the Australian cricket team’s future.
On 24th March 2018, Cameron Bancroft was caught by the camera while trying to put a yellow coloured page like thing after using it on the ball.
A controversy generated against Captain Steve Smith and Bancroft. And they admitted that they used sandpaper in the tournament to change the shape of the ball. At the press conference, Steve Smith admitted that the senior management also knew about the incident and tampered the ball to make the swing.
When this incident happened at Cape Town, Steve Smith was the captain and David Warner was the vice-captain. From investigations, it was cleared that David Warner was the mastermind behind this sandpaper trick. This unfortunate incident was circulated all over the world including Australia Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull.
After this, Cameron Bancroft was banned for nine months and Steve Smith & David Warner were banned for a year by Cricket Australia. Also, Warner was excluded from doing captaincy in his country for his life and Steve Smith for a year.
The ball-tampering scandal came against the foundation of an already fractious tour in which David Warner became the target of the crowd after an argument with Quinton de Kock of South Africa team during the first Test match in Durban.
Before the day the scandal broke, David Warner was ill-treated by a viewer in the member’s stand at Newlands, for which coach Darren Lehmann condemning what the viewer said was the worst thing for a player.
A lot of time has passed after that incident. Both Steve Smith as well as David Warner has returned to the international cricket successfully but the mark of that incident still sticks around on the Australian Cricket and its prestige.
