Crash: The ‘stinging bottom line’ which will haunt Cameron Bancroft’s attempts to return to the Australian Test side

Cameron Bancroft is evidently - at best - the fifth best candidate to open the batting for Australia in Test cricket. ROBERT CRADDOCK writes it might be as high as he ever gets again.

Will the events at Newlands in 2018 continue looming over Cameron Bancroft after he was overlooked again for the Australian Test squad? Picture: Ashley Vlotman/Gallo Images/Getty Images.

Cameron Bancroft has gone from the boy who knew too little to the man who knew too much.

All the right things were said about discarded opener Bancroft following his Test snubbing but there was a stinging bottom line that could not be avoided.

It was simply that Bancroft is now – at best – the No 5 five opener in the country and that at age 31 he would need to do everything right – and others do a lot wrong - to be any chance of playing another Test.

If Bancroft never plays at the top level again it would mean that while David Warner and Steve Smith – through sheer longevity at the top level – have been able to push their involvement in Sandpapergate further back in the public consciousness, Bancroft would never be able to outrun his crime by smothering it with sustained success.

As it stands, following the selection of Australia’s Test team to play the West Indies in Adelaide, Usman Khawaja, Steve Smith, Matt Renshaw and Marcus Harris are ahead of Bancroft as openers.

Will the events at Newlands in 2018 continue looming over Cameron Bancroft after he was overlooked again for the Australian Test squad? Picture: Ashley Vlotman/Gallo Images/Getty Images.

If your glass is half full you might tell him that there were times in recent years when Mitchell Marsh thought he was completely cooked as a Test player and spectacularly rose again.

And Usman Khawaja, after being dropped six times, felt so done and dusted he focused on playing for Queensland with no thoughts of another promotion before his latest stunning surge.

But for every Marsh and Khawaja there are dozens of hard luck stories of players who played a few Tests and were never invited back.

Much has been said and written about Warner’s looming autobiography and how much he will reveal about who knew what about Sandpapergate.

But what about Bancroft, who was at the absolute centre of proceedings given he put the sandpaper on the ball in the 2018 Test in Cape Town?

What secrets will he unveil? Has he any misgivings saying in a newspaper interview it was “self-explanatory’’ about whether members of the bowling attack knew about the sandpaper, a word which prompted them to produce a statement rejecting his claim?

Will he take his inner thoughts to the grave?

“He’ll be gutted,’’ said Justin Langer in his column in The West Australian about Bancroft’s omission, joining the likes of Kim Hughes, Tom Moody and Mike Hussey is stridently supporting Bancroft’s right to play.

The selectors claim there was no vendetta against Bancroft and no member of the side would have had a problem playing with him.

That may have been the case but it’s one thing to have players prepared to play with you.

It’s quite another to have teammates actively campaigning for your recall such was the case with Cameron Green.

Originally published as Crash: The ‘stinging bottom line’ which will haunt Cameron Bancroft’s attempts to return to the Australian Test side