Cricket Australia's Integrity Unit Reaches Out To Cameron Bancroft To Gain More Information About His Recent Comments On Sandpaper Gate
Updated - 17 May 2021, 06:31 PM
The 2018 Cape Town Sandpaper gate scandal has taken fire once again after Cameron Bancroft, who was caught using sandpaper on the ball then, indirectly revealed that there were more people – the bowlers in particular – other than Steve Smith and David Warner who were privy to his activities.
Cameron Bancroft was handed a 9 months ban, while Smith and Warner were given year-long bans each after caught guilty of ball-tampering against South Africa.
In an interview with the Guardian, he stated that it was “self-explanatory” that the bowlers in that Test – Josh Hazlewood, Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Marsh, and Nathan Lyon – had to be aware the ball was being tampered with.
“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.
On being pushed further, he replied: “Uh… yeah, look, I think, yeah, I think it’s pretty probably self-explanatory.”
The 28-year-old’s words blew up and everyone made their opinions clear, including former captain Michael Clarke who said it was not surprising to learn that the bowlers also knew about the altering condition of the ball.
Cricket Australia seeks out Cameron Bancroft for more information
Ben Oliver, Cricket Australia’s head of national teams, confirmed on Monday that the integrity team, spearheaded by Rebecca Murray, had reached out to Cameron Bancroft to see if he was willing to speak further about the issue. However, there has been no response yet, at the time of writing, as Cameron Bancroft is in England playing County Championship.
Oliver pointed out that a “thorough investigation” investigation was conducted then, and they have always accepted invitations if anyone had anything more to reveal about the Newlands Test event which led to the mass shaming of Australian cricket.
“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,” Ben Oliver was quoted as saying by ESPNcricinfo.
“There was obviously a thorough investigation into that, to that incident. There were actions taken on the back of that and then since that time, everyone who’s been involved in the team has worked incredibly hard to rebuild confidence and to ultimately sort of aspire to make Australians proud of the Australian cricket team. So from that point of view that processes have taken place.”
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