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Baggy Green ball tampering: Bancroft, Smith and the Aussie "Leadership Group"

honestbharani

Whatever it takes!!!
They go on as though these boys invented ball tampering. The only real story here is the serious lack of brain cells that lead them to believe they could get away with this method given the number of cameras on the ground and the scrutiny they're subjected to.
Also the fact that they felt they needed it to this degree given everyone else seems to settle for mint flavored saliva polish. Warner had his gloves with the stuff in there and then when he was found out, it was passed to Bancroft. Pretty obvious there is a team decision involved here and everyone was in AFAIC.
 

tony p

First Class Debutant
Let's hope England don't bring any dirt over with them when they come over for the Ashes later this year.

Such a storm in a teacup, ball tampering, big deal, it's gone on for over 100 years, and should be LEGAL.
Big bats, small boundaries, flat pitches, almost every rule in favour of the batsman, yet people moan when you do something to the ball, utter crap. I admit, sandpaper wasn't the brightest idea.

You should be able to pick the seam, step on it, rub it in the dirt, whatever you like, BUT you get THAT ball for 80 overs, and if you ruin it, bad luck, you don't get another one until the next new ball is due.

I was reading a book recently and the story was an umpire, either Ken Palmer or Bill Alley,can't remember which, in a county match saw that the ball was moving prodigiously on a fine day. He took the ball from the bowler and asked him, "Have you picked the seam".
The bowler sheepishly said that he had and not to report him. The umpire said, "well if you don't take 5 wickets today with THAT ball, I will report you"
A different time.
 

ParwazHaiJunoon

First Class Debutant
let the bowlers have their own cricket balls like batters have their bats
They do have their own balls though.

let them do whatever they want with it as long as the seam is okay and it is not out of shape
Seam can never be out of shape as it is between balls.

leave them with the umpires at the end of play
That's exactly what happened in Newlands. Poor Bancroft was forced by umpire to show what is in his underwear :laugh:. That umpire should have checked whether sandpaper tampered his balls or not.
We might know the answer after Bancroft's marriage though.
 
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Teja.

Global Moderator

Micheal Clarke:

“What’s the surprise? That more than three people knew? I don’t think anybody who has played the game of cricket, or knows a little bit about cricket, would know that in a team like that, at the highest level, when the ball is such an important part of the game,” Clarke told Sky Sports radio.

“If you’d played the game of cricket, you would know more than three people know what was going on in there. 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,” he added.


Adam Gilchrist:

Former Australian wicketkeeper-batsman Adam Gilchrist said that CA did not want to go deeper into it and get to the root of the problem. “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,” Gilchrist was quoted as saying on SEN Radio.

“Anyone would be naive 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,” he added.


Ian Chappell:

Former Australian cricketer Ian Chappell wants to know the whole story that led to Australians cheating against South Africa. “If I was Smith, Warner or Bancroft, I’d want the others publicly recognised for their part in what happened,” Chappell told Nine’s Wide World of Sports.

“It’s not just the fact the ball was tampered with at Newlands, it’s all the lead-up about how it got to that point, and what caused it to reach that level of stupidity. For it to have got that far it had to have involved a lot of people, and not just those around the team. It involves people way up the ladder, and the fact that none of them were enveloped, if I was one of the three that did get pinged, I’d be pretty pissed off about it.,” he added.
 

Burgey

Request Your Custom Title Now!
Such a storm in a teacup, ball tampering, big deal, it's gone on for over 100 years, and should be LEGAL.
This may well be the case, but atm it isn't legal. So it needs to be dealt with in some way.

The issue here is CA's ridiculous over reaction to begin with. The game's governing body was happy with a two game ban. The opposing captain in the match at issue had been done twice before and kept his job. Atherton kept his job. It was an open secret during the 2005 Ashes that the Poms were ball tampering - they were getting reverse swing after 15 overs on the greenest grounds in world cricket, and Simon Jones openly joked about it afterwards. Dravid was made captain after his incidence of ball tampering. Imran made a career of it and became Prime Minister of his failed State. As with this incident in Cape Town, all of the blokes who were sprung were not going it alone.

Each of the other reactions to ball tampering was proportionate and appropriate. CA's hysteria is what's ensured this saga has dragged on. The hilarity is the higher ups who panicked all got to leave of their own accord with healthy bonuses afterwards. ****s.
 

Prince EWS

Global Moderator
There’s nothing to tell them about. Bancroft’s comments don’t implicate anyone.
Yeah I interpreted the comments as him assuming the bowlers would've figured it out, as opposed to him saying they were openly in on it.

I think he's right too. The quicks at least would have known, if not specifically sandpaper then at least general skulduggery. I don't think he's really putting forward any intel on that though, just assuming what most of us always have.
 

Daemon

Request Your Custom Title Now!
We did not know a foreign substance was taken onto the field to alter the condition of the ball until we saw the images on the big screen at Newlands.
The fact that they had to be so specific instead of just saying no we did not have any knowledge of tampering of the ball whether in Newlands or anywhere else means they're guilty and confirmed Cheating Aussies, as we've suspected all along.

“We pride ourselves on our honesty,”
lmao
 

honestbharani

Whatever it takes!!!
You gotta love how so many fans and Aussie media are now equating mint flavored saliva with actually taking out sandpaper as a practice to get reverse swing. Brettig's artcile in crapinfo is especially full of that delicious denial. He says reverse swing is not to be seen in the game. Does he watch tests in the subcontinent? You can still get good reverse if the grounds themselves are hard surfaces and the ball gets hit enough onto the practice pitches etc. It just wont be as pronounced as what you can do with a foreign object on the ball directly. Will be very interesting to see the Aussie trio's numbers pre and post Newlands and compare the drop, if any, with other players.

I mean, this is just laughably bad and sad, and unfortunately fully expected denial and lies and falsehoods.

Brettig on Crapinfo said:
At the same time, there has been next to no reverse swing, a state of affairs that has helped plenty of batting sides and deprived the long form of the game of some of the more dramatic passages of play it has ever witnessed.

Those frenzied half hours, orchestrated by the likes of Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Simon Jones, Andrew Flintoff, Zaheer Khan, Ishant Sharma, James Anderson and Mitchell Starc, were brilliant for broadcasters.
 

anil1405

International Captain
I'm still not fully convinced that Smith was that involved in the ins and outs of the tampering - his role has been richly studied and documented, probably the most so of any of the three, and the worst thing he did IMO came after the fact with that horrendous press conference - but I fully believe that the bowlers knew all about it all along and have thought that since day 1.
In which case Smith should never return to the helm as the skipper of his national side ever again. When you're not completely aware of what's happening around you as a skipper you don't deserve to be one.
 

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