Australian wicketkeeper-batsman Cameron Bancroft was involved in the infamous ball-tampering scandal in Cape Town Test against South Africa in 2018. Steven Smith and David Warner played a significant role in the same as well and were handed subsequent bans by Cricket Australia.
Australian cricket fraternity has been awakened again after wicketkeeper-batsman Cameron Bancroft made fresh revelations regarding the infamous ball-tempering scandal during the Cape Town Test in 2018. Bancroft, along with Steven Smith and David Warner, was found guilty of their alleged involvement and Cricket Australia handed the trio subsequent bans.
Three years since the incident, Bancroft has revealed that more or less the entire team knew about the incident, despite Smith and Warner being the masterminds behind it before being implemented by Bancroft himself. "Yeah, look, all I wanted to do was to be responsible and accountable for my own actions and part. Yeah, obviously, what I did benefits bowlers and the awareness around that, probably, is self-explanatory. I guess one thing I learnt through the journey and being responsible is that's where the buck stops. Had I had better awareness, I would have made a much better decision," he told The Guardian last week.
Meanwhile, following his latest revelation, Cricket Australia and its integrity unit have reportedly reached out to Bancroft for extra information regarding the incident. At the same time, further investigations could be done if needed.
"I think we've maintained all the way through that if, if anyone had any new information relating to that incident that we've encouraged people to come forward and discuss that with our integrity unit. In this particular case, our integrity team have reached out to Cam again, extending that invitation to him if he does have any, any new information. We'll wait to see his response on that; we haven't had had a response. But, in saying that we're operating on different time zones," said Cricket Australia's head of national teams, Ben Oliver, reports ESPNCricinfo.
Following Bancroft's new bomb, many Australian cricketing experts and former cricketers have said that the case seems to be far from over and this could bring in a new twist in the entire scandal. "The problem Cricket Australia has is the fact they've tried to sweep it under the carpet and not come out and tell the full story. They go and do that Netflix or whatever it was [on Amazon] and show all that, come inside the change room and let's talk about what happened after Sandpapergate, but the public wants to go 'hang on a second, take me through the few months before Sandpapergate, what led up to that, what happened in South Africa, there's a TV show for you Netflix, give us that information," told former Australian skipper Michael Clarke to Sky Sports Radio.
Also, Clarke's former Australian teammate Adam Gilchrist has stated to SEN Radio, "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. Anyone would be naïve 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."
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