Once intense and at times bitter rivals, Tim Paine is in furious agreement with former South African captain Faf du Plessis’s recent book extracts over the Sandpapergate scandal. Everyone was doing it.
Speaking to the Herald and The Age ahead of his book release on Tuesday, Paine says in The Price Paid, a story of life, cricket and lessons learned, that ball-tampering was cricket’s “dark secret.”
Tim Paine appeals for against Faf du Plessis in the 2018 Cape Town Test, where sandpapergate exploded.Credit:AP
“I think a lot of the things he writes about in his book are in mine around that sort of thing,” Paine said. “At the time a lot of teams were doing something to tamper with the ball.
“Obviously, in that series, it went to the extreme and now clearly, lessons have been learned and the whole behaviour around that’s changed.
“It took a lot of a lot of hard work, and rebuilding. But I think if you look at the silver lining out of what happened there, it has changed the behaviour of cricketers around the world. Certainly, I haven’t seen it since.”
The fallout from the scandal in Cape Town more than four years ago still rumbles on, with the Cricket Australia board only now revisiting David Warner’s lifetime leadership ban.
Tim Paine and Steve Smith taking to the field during the 2018 Capetown Test.Credit:Getty Images
Cameron Bancroft, who produced the sandpaper on the field, was banned for nine months while Steve Smith as captain and David Warner, the alleged ringleader of the plot to tamper with the ball, were each banned for a year, with Smith also given a two-year leadership ban.
Both Paine and du Plessis consider the bans excessive, particularly in light of the International Cricket Council laws at the time, which listed the maximum penalty as a two-match ban.
While raising questions about Australia’s behaviour, du Plessis freely admits South Africa were also tampering with the ball.
“I’m not mentioning this from atop a high horse. In the past, we have also been found guilty of employing unorthodox methods to get the ball to reverse swing,” du Plessis writes.
Cameron Bancroft and Steve Smith face the media in Capetown 2018.Credit:Getty Images
“… In our team, we just thought, ‘Nah! Ball tampering and reverse swing have always been there.’ In fact, it was probably more prevalent when camera technology wasn’t as good as it is today.
“… Personally, I don’t think Steve Smith did much wrong. It’s no secret that all cricket teams want the ball to reverse … We too, have pushed those boundaries.”
For all accusations by both teams about the behaviour of the other in 2018, Paine claimed that no one was ready for what happened on the field in Cape Town.
“Everyone out there was shocked when they looked up on the big screen and saw Cameron Bancroft with a piece
of sandpaper in his hand,” Paine wrote. “I was stunned. We all were.
“I can let you in on the fact that over my years in the game I’d heard talk about guys taping small pieces of sandpaper onto their fingers, but this was next level. It was a Test match and it was on the big screen and it looked terrible.
“My heart sank, I was thinking, ‘What the f—?’ A sense of dread came over us all.”
The Australians had already been strongly criticised for their behaviour from the outset of an ugly Test series.
Du Plessis makes no qualms about it in his book, saying “we were going to force-feed the visitors some of their own medicine … let the bullies be bullied.”
Tim Paine became captain following sandpapergate.Credit:Getty Images
After his unexpected recall to the Test side for the Ashes earlier that summer, Paine was shocked at the level of on-field acrimony.
“I found that to be a really intense series in terms of the verbals out on the ground,” he recalled. “Obviously, Test cricket is competitive, but I thought that series was getting close [to the the edge] and the warning signs were there that it was getting a touch too aggressive.
“Faf says in his book they would try and bully the bullies, and what you saw there was them trying to fight fire with fire, and it just tipped over the edge in a number of ways. And sandpaper, obviously, was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
“I suspect nobody will ever be satisfied they know the full story of how we got to this place. I’m not sure I even
understand myself.
“There was a lot of things going on in that series that, looking back, weren’t in the right spirit of the game. And I think if had we had our time again, we’d probably pull back on some of that stuff. I think both teams would in terms of how we were sort of going at each other and the animosity between the two groups.
“It was absolutely competitive and a win-at-all-costs mentality … it went too far.”
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