Australian cricket’s moment of shame keeps coming back to one conspiracy

Aussie legends Michael Clarke and Adam Gilchrist’s damning response to a new ball-tampering claim shows the scandal’s ugliest day is still ahead.

Australian cricket’s greatest black eye keeps coming back to the same conspiracy.

Cricket Australia has been forced to respond to a bombshell new statement from Cameron Bancroft that suggested Australia’s bowlers were aware of the ball-tampering plot in South Africa three years ago.

Bancroft, David Warner and Steve Smith all received lengthy suspensions when the opening batsman was caught using sandpaper on the ball during a fiery third Test in Cape Town in 2018.

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An investigation into the darkest day in Australian cricket history concluded no other members of the team were aware of the cheating, but Bancroft suggested that wasn’t the case in an explosive interview published this weekend.

It is the original investigation, led by former CA head of integrity Iain Roy, that keeps emerging as the only thing that is stopping the dam from bursting and the truth of the scandal from breaking free.

Cricket legends Michael Clarke and Adam Gilchrist both had the same thought on Monday when suggesting the truth of the ball-tampering episode will only come out when someone involved within the Aussie cricket dressing room during that fateful tour of South Africa does a tell-all interview or writes a book to clean their conscience. When one plank falls, the entire tower looks ready to crumble.

Until then, Gilchrist says, the investigation led by Roy and former head of high performance Pat Howard means suspicion and scorn will continue to follow every member of the Australian team in 2018.

Caption Screengrabs supplied by FoxSports of the ball tampering incident.

The investigation has repeatedly come under fire for focusing solely on the Cape Town act of ball-tampering. The narrow focus of the investigation has never appeased the cricketing world and it led to Aussie cricket legend Ian Chappell famously suggesting Roy’s investigation was a sham from the start.

“That probe was pretty specific,” Chappell said.

“It almost sounded to me like they were after Warner... If it was going to be a proper probe it would have been far more wide-reaching.”

It keeps coming back to that conspiracy.

It was revealed this weekend that not every player in the Aussie team was interviewed during Roy’s investigation.

Gilchrist slams Cricket Australia, says ‘naive’ to think bowlers weren’t aware

Gilchrist said on SEN Radio Monday it is only a matter of time before “names are named”.

“It will linger forever, whether it is someone’s book or an ad hoc interview,” Gilchrist said on SEN’s Gilly and Goss. “Eventually I think names will be named. I think there are some people who have it stored away and are ready to pull the trigger when the time is right.”

“The fallout is going to linger on and on because pretty much most teams in the world were doing something with the ball in that period,’’ Gilchrist said. “It was getting out of control.

“I think Cricket Australia are responsible for why this will be continually asked. When they did their investigation at the time they had Patty Howard the high-performance general manager, Iain Roy was the integrity officer.

“They went there and did this very quick review of that isolated incident and perhaps no one in the team knew. Perhaps Cam did grab the sandpaper on his own accord and walked out there and did not tell anyone.”

Cameron Bancroft was caught in the act.

While Cricket Australia has said it will re-open the investigation if presented with any new evidence, Gilchrist said the governing body is to blame for the current climate of doubt.

“There was an opportunity for CA if they were going to make such a strong statement they needed to do a more thorough investigation to work out where the root of the problem was,” he said.

“Anyone would be naive to think people were not aware with what was going on about ball maintenance. I don’t think Cricket Australia wanted to go there. They did not want to go any deeper than that superficial example of ball tampering.

“They did not investigate to see whether it was systemic had it been going on and on and on. Around the cricketing globe it was widely accepted a lot of teams were doing it.’’

Clarke says bowlers had to know ball-tampering plot

Former Test captain Michael Clarke said Cricket Australia tried to “sweep it under the carpet.

“They’ve got to hold the ball to bowl with it,” Clarke said on his Sky Sports Radio Big Breakfast show.

“So, if there’s sandpaper being rubbed on the ball they have to get the ball back to the bowler and the bowler has to hang on to it before he lets it go.

“I can tell you now if you went and grabbed a pen, just a pen and put a little ‘1’ somewhere on my cricket bat; on top of the handle, on the edge of the bat, on the toe of the bat, on the face, under the grip, anywhere, just a little number one I would have noticed.

The moment Australian cricket collapsed.

“If you are playing sport at the highest level you know your tools that good it’s not funny.

“Can you imagine that ball being thrown back to the bowler and the bowler not knowing about it?

“Please.”

Clarke said the truth could “come out in someone’s book anyway”

Cricket Australia’s official response

At the time CA encouraged anyone with evidence or concerns about ball-tampering that weren’t exposed during the South Africa saga to come forward.

“CA has maintained all along that if anyone is in possession of new information in regards to the Cape Town Test of 2018, they should come forward and present it,” a CA spokesman told Cricinfo.

“The investigation conducted at the time was detailed and comprehensive. Since then, no one has presented new information to CA that casts doubt on the investigation’s findings.”

Speaking to The Guardian, Bancroft was asked if the team’s bowlers — which in that Newlands Test consisted of Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc and Nathan Lyon — were aware of the ball-tampering plot at the time.

“Yeah, look, all I wanted to do was to be responsible and accountable for my own actions and part,” Bancroft said.

“Yeah, obviously what I did benefits bowlers and the awareness around that, probably, is self-explanatory … had I had better awareness I would have made a much better decision.”

Pressed again on if the bowlers knew, Bancroft responded: “Uh … yeah, look, I think, yeah, I think it’s pretty probably self-explanatory.”

Eyebrows were raised when CA announced no other players in the team besides the banned trio knew of the ball-tampering, and Bancroft’s bombshell revelation is sure to reopen old wounds about whether he, Smith and Warner were unfairly made scapegoats.

None of the other Australian cricketers or staff were sanctioned for the incident, however, coach Darren Lehmann, high performance boss Pat Howard, and CA board director Mark Taylor all resigned in the aftermath.