Coach makes revealing ball-tampering claim after Cameron Bancroft bombshell

A coach inside the inner sanctum when Australia was caught cheating has made revealing claims after Cam Bancroft dropped a bombshell.

David Saker has weighed into the ball-tampering scandal.

Former Australian bowling coach David Saker has hinted at a sense of collective responsibility around the ball-tampering scandal in the wake of Cameron Bancroft’s damning claims more than just three players knew what was going on.

Bancroft was banned for nine months while Steve Smith and David Warner were both suspended for a year for their roles in the cheating controversy during a tour to South Africa in 2018.

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An investigation by Cricket Australia at the time determined nobody else outside the trio were aware of the plot to use sandpaper on the ball, but Bancroft cast doubt over that finding in an explosive interview on the weekend, where he suggested the team’s bowlers knew what was happening.

CA responded to Bancroft’s bombshell by saying it was open to receiving new information about the ball-tampering episode from anyone with knowledge that hasn’t yet been uncovered, and now Saker — who was bowling coach during the South Africa tour three years ago but left his post in 2019 — has weighed in.

He didn’t go into specifics, but said the saga would hover like a dark cloud over Australian cricket for years to come.

“Obviously a lot of things went wrong at that time. The finger-pointing is going to go on and on and on,” Saker told Nine newspapers.

“There was a lot of people to blame. It could have been me to blame, it could have been someone else. It could have been stopped and it wasn’t, which is unfortunate.

“Cameron’s a very nice guy. He’s just doing it to get something off his chest … he’s not going to be the last.

“You could point your finger at me, you could point your finger at Boof (former coach Darren Lehmann), could you point it at other people, of course you could.

“The disappointing thing is it’s never going to go away. Regardless of what’s said, we all know that we made a monumental mistake. The gravity wasn’t as plain until it all came out.”

Cameron Bancroft was caught red-handed.

Sakers’ comments were interpreted by some cricket writers as support for Bancroft’s claims that more than three people were involved.

Daniel Brettig tweeted: “Coming from the senior assistant and bowling coach at the time, can’t get a much more definitive statement of collective responsibility than that.”

In a piece for The Telegraph, English journalist Nick Hoult said Saker had “hinted … at collective responsibility and wider knowledge of what was going on”.

Speaking to The Guardian on the weekend, Bancroft was asked if the team’s bowlers in the Cape Town Test — Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc and Nathan Lyon — were aware of the ball-tampering plan 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.

David Saker says the finger-pointing could go on forever.

Speaking on Fox Sports’ The Back Page in June 2018, Hazlewood denied he had any knowledge of the ball-tampering scheme.

“No, no,” he responded when asked if he knew of the plan.

“We obviously have ball maintenance people in the team, usually batsmen because they’re in the circle and the bowlers field fine leg, deep square — where ever it is. They just look after the ball from time to time. As soon as it stops swinging normal then it starts to reverse swing.

“We pretty much get it (the ball) at the stop of our mark, one second before we start running in. So we have a quick look, see which side’s a bit worn.”

Other players have expressed frustration at being associated with the Cape Town incident, maintaining they were as shocked as anybody to see the footage of Bancroft with a piece of sandpaper.

“I remember seeing what happened up on the big screen and just getting a sick feeling in my stomach and just thought, ‘Oh no, what’s going on here? What’s going to happen?’,” Cummins told cricket.com.au in 2018.