Mark Taylor, Ian Healy and Ian Chappell question Cricket Australia’s ball-tampering probe
Test icons Mark Taylor, Ian Chappell and Ian Healy have questioned whether Cricket Australia properly investigated the Cape Town ball-tampering scandal.
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Members of Channel Nine’s old commentary team have made the explosive allegation that Cape Town might not have been the first time Australia tampered with the ball in Test cricket.
On the eve of Steve Smith’s and David Warner’s 12-month bans expiring at the end of this week, respected former captains Mark Taylor and Ian Chappell and wicketkeeping great Ian Healy have slammed the deliberately limited investigation Cricket Australia undertook at the time.
CA integrity chief Iain Roy, no longer at Cricket Australia, only focused on the day three sandpaper incident in Cape Town.
Several members of the touring party were not interviewed and no questions were asked about previous Test matches on that tour of South Africa.
Chappell said the main purpose of the investigation was to hang Warner.
Healy is convinced Australia had tampered before they were caught and claims other players were “unlucky” not to be fingered with any blame.
“They'd certainly been doing it for some time,” Healy told Wide World of Sports.
“A lot of them got lucky in an inquiry that was very specific to this incident.”
Respected great and Sunday Telegraph columnist Chappell said CA did not conduct a thorough investigation.
“That probe was pretty specific and it almost sounded to me like they were after Warner anyhow,” Chappell toldNine.
“If it was going to be a proper probe it would have been far more wide-reaching.”
Former skipper and CA board member Taylor, who has been widely mentioned as a potential target for Cricket Australia’s new high performance post, said questions remain unanswered as Smith and Warner prepare to return to Australian colours for the World Cup.
“There was no probe into finding out how long it had been going on for,” said Taylor.
“Was this the first time? There’s no doubt this ‘ball management’ has been going on for a long time, and I dare say every country is either doing it or working out how to do it, but there’s a line somewhere between ball management and ball tampering.
“The grey area in all of this is how much of this ball management in the past was tampering and went unnoticed.”
Smith was adamant in the immediate aftermath of Cape Town and when he spoke most recently in December that ball-tampering did not happen prior to Newlands, to the best of his knowledge.
“I can promise you this is the first time it’s happened,” Smith said at the time.
Smith and Warner are back in the IPL as the countdown starts to World Cup selection.
Originally published as Mark Taylor, Ian Healy and Ian Chappell question Cricket Australia’s ball-tampering probe
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