Forgotten Cameron Bancroft fast fading from view

Cameron Bancroft’s career is again in free fall and this time it’s got nothing to do with a strip of sandpaper.

Cameron Bancroft looks dejected after his dismissal against Tasmania this week Picture: AAP

While his svengali was smoking South Africans to every corner of that ground this week, Cam Bancroft was making his third duck of the season.

While David Warner continued down the redemptive road, Bancroft was sinking further into the mire.

While Steven Smith was being restored to No 1 in the Test rankings, Bancroft was falling to No 50 in the Shield aggregate.

Smith and Warner have rebuilt their careers even if they haven’t fully repaired their reputations. (And probably never will.)

But two years after Cape Town, Bancroft is again in free fall and this time it’s all about his cricket, not him trying to hide a strip of sandpaper in his underwear.

With a 13.16 average from 13 innings this summer, Bancroft is barely clinging to his place in the WA side. His Shield scores this summer are 30, 0, 10, 6 not out, 0, 11, 12, 23, 10, 25, 19, 12 and 0.

Not even Justin Langer’s patronage can turn that water into wine.

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Bancroft’s 25 against SA a fortnight ago came in 155 deliveries. When the end came — bowled shouldering arms to a Chadd Sayers straight one — it was only marginally uglier than what came before.

It’s hard to escape the unpleasant thought that Bancroft has paid the price of his career for doing what he was told in Cape Town.

Just as the last man in goes under the lid at short-leg — which Bancroft did especially well by the way — the kid was shanghaied into doing the dirty work two years ago in South Africa.

For a while it seemed he would be the first of the disgraced three to achieve redemption. Returning from his suspension ahead of Smith and Warner, he made 138 not out and 86 against NSW in Sydney a year ago this week.

The runs continued to flow during a pre-Ashes stint with Durham. In nine County matches, he made two hundreds, three fifties, and averaged 45.

That justified his recall for the first Test of the Ashes. But after four failures, he was dropped for the third Test at Headingley.

The selectors’ ardour remained undimmed.

“He’s the hard-nosed, hard worker that we want in this team,” chairman of selectors Trevor Hohns said after Bancroft was dropped.

“I have no doubt that Cameron has quite a good future for us. It’s in his court, of course, he’s got to put some runs on the board, but he’s the type of player the Australian cricket team want.”

But the runs remained elusive upon his return for the home summer. That didn’t stop Hohns and Langer parachuting Bancroft into the Australia A side to play Pakistan when Nic Maddinson was a late withdrawal.

Bancroft’s 49 in Australia A’s all out 122 was enough of an excuse for the selectors to pick him in the Test squad.

This was about the time that things started getting weird.

Bancroft was dismissed six out of seven times caught in the arc from the keeper’s left hand to the vicinity of leg gully. A leg slip became standard for Bancroft as he continued to flick fine catches in a horrible run of outs.

He didn’t get a Test in the Pakistan series and was then quietly dropped from the squad for the New Zealand Tests.

BBL09 couldn’t come quickly enough, but when the Shield resumed so did the low scores, although now the nicks were flying off the opposite edge of the bat. He’s been caught behind in his past three innings.

Matt Renshaw was averaging 20.22 when he was dropped by Queensland; it’s hard to see how Bancroft can be retained with a significantly poorer record.

Of course players have recovered from similar slumps in the past: David Hookes was averaging 16 when he was dropped by SA in 1980-81.

He returned to hoist the Shield the following season and later reclaimed his place in the Test side.

So there are precedents. But Bancroft will need all of his reputed work ethic and character to return to Test calculations.

That his fall coincides with the Warner and Smith show in Cape Town this week proves that cricket is indeed a cruel game.