Cricket news: Mystery surrounding Sandpapergate scandal will ensure the issue keeps bubbling

Australian cricket is doing its best to move on from the infamous ball tampering affair but the filing cabinet won’t close. Robert Craddock explains why.

When the first blows are struck in the first Test match between Australia and South Africa the Sandpapergate scandal will be shunted back into its historical filing cabinet.

But the drawer won’t be locked. The case may be finished but it’s never closed.

It will be a surprise if the embers of it are fired up this series. Australia are sick of it and South Africa are nonplussed by it.

But we haven’t seen the last of it. The file won’t gather dust for long. Career-ending autobiographies will ensure that.

Like a ghost which suddenly appears in a haunted house you just never know when it might hover into your world.

Several Australian players have told us that not one word has been spoken about the infamous ball tampering affair of 2018 in the Australian camp this week.

David Warner and Steven Smith during the troubled tour of South Africa in 2018.

You can understand the vibe. It’s the present not the past that matters. Time to move on. Nothing more to see here.

“The trouble is,’’ said respected South African journalist Neil Manthorp who landed in Brisbane this week, “it just appears like there’s more to see. You can only move on when you know the full facts.

“If there are still unknown details in the closet there will always be mystery. And we still don’t know the full facts. Who knew, who didn’t know? It seems like there is plausibility deniability going on.

“When some people say they ‘didn’t know’, what, exactly, is it that they didn’t know? Just that sandpaper was going to be used? Or just that they didn’t know it was yellow sandpaper?”

There was outrage in the cricket world when David Warner was asked — and refused — to have a public hearing for his case to have his leadership ban overturned.

But a public hearing — four years ago when it happened — might have been the best thing for all.

The crime wasn’t murder. It was scratching a cricket ball with a piece of sandpaper. The most tawdry details were already out there.

David Warner and wife Candice with their children land back in Sydney to the huge waiting media throng at Sydney airport in 2018.

What would possibly be wrong with getting everything out in the open having blanket fines and then getting on with life?

Instead of the highly secretive, never released, hastily convened and limited in scope inquiry conducted by Iain Roy, cricket would have been in a better place had it thrown open its front door.

Instead the narrow, secretive and inconclusive nature of the inquiry leaves the key question of which players actually knew about the offence waiting until David Warner clarifies it in his end of career autobiography.

While all this happens, South Africa watches on aghast that such a matter could make Australia turn itself inside out.

As reported by Cricinfo this week, South African players were caught three times in three years before Sandpapergate with Faf du Plessis (twice) and Vernon Philander defended rather than disciplined by their board.

Steve Smith speaks to the media after arriving back in Australia from the South African series in 2018.

The South African Board even tried to instruct its broadcaster not to air footage of Philander scratching the ball with his thumbnail.

Australia, by contrast, had its Prime Minister thundering in off the sight screen in protest at the players actions.

Some South Africans were stunned at the heavy penalties but former Proteas skipper Shaun Pollock, who has landed in Brisbane to commentate on the series, wasn’t.

“You Australians have always done your best but have done it in a fair way so when that news broke I think it surprised a lot of people,’’ Pollock said.

“But I feel the world is short of grace and mercy. People make mistakes in life. We should move on.’’

Originally published as Cricket news: Mystery surrounding Sandpapergate scandal will ensure the issue keeps bubbling