Sandpaper scandal eclipsed South Africa’s 2018 Test success in series replayed this week
When Australia toured South Africa in 2018, a ball-tampering incident involving sandpaper diverted attention from South Africa’s 3-1 Test series victory and dominated headlines; Australia return to South Africa this week for their first Test series there since. The fallout in Australia — resignations, bans and political commentary — became the public story, while South Africa’s on-field achievement receded into the background.
Signs of trouble emerged during the series when the ball exhibited unusually pronounced reverse-swing in the first two Tests and tensions rose after a stairwell altercation between Quinton de Kock and David Warner in Durban and supporters directed misogynistic abuse at Warner and his family in Gqeberha. Nathan Lyon had pledged to “head-butt the line” of what was acceptable, and Darren Lehmann’s coaching culture was described with the phrase “mental disintegration.” The response to the tampering was extensive: Australia’s prime minister intervened, Steve Smith and David Warner were stripped of captaincy and vice-captaincy and banned for a year, Cameron Bancroft received a nine-month ban, Lehmann resigned, and Smith was escorted through Johannesburg airport by police and cameras before breaking down at a press conference in Sydney with his father behind him.
South African reaction to the scale of the Australian crisis was muted by contrast. “We thought it would be a big news story and then blow over,” said Faf du Plessis, who captained South Africa in 2018. Du Plessis, twice previously sanctioned for ball condition offences — once in 2013 for rubbing the ball on his zipper and again in 2016 in Australia for applying saliva while sucking a mint in the episode dubbed “mintgate” — described the environment as: “It’s a pressure cooker, isn’t it? … You’re under so much pressure that eventually the lid blows off.”
Any neat moral separation between the teams, however, was misplaced: the treatment of Candice Warner was condemned, with two Cricket South Africa officials photographed smiling alongside supporters wearing Sonny Bill Williams masks intended to humiliate her. Kagiso Rabada, South Africa’s leading wicket-taker across the series, was initially suspended after making contact with Smith while celebrating the dismissal; Cricket South Africa brought in one of the country’s leading advocates who successfully argued on appeal for the charge to be downgraded.
Vernon Philander, who played all four Tests, questioned the severity of the punishments meted out to Smith and Warner, saying the bans were “a little bit outrageous” and adding: “For a prime minister to get involved … I don’t think there was a need for that.” The episode was not unprecedented in global cricket: Michael Atherton, Sachin Tendulkar and Shahid Afridi have faced sanctions over the condition of the ball, but none of those cases produced the crisis that engulfed Australia in 2018.
The Australian misconduct did, nevertheless, carry serious weight. The use of sandpaper to alter the ball and efforts to conceal the act were described in the coverage as brazen and compounding the offence. Du Plessis expressed particular sympathy for Bancroft, then in only his eighth Test: “That’s not on him,” he said. “He’s not the guy that instigated this.”
On the field, South Africa achieved a series of landmark performances that were largely overshadowed by the scandal. The hosts had achieved something they had waited 48 years for: victories at home against Australia after previously beating them away three times in succession but, since readmission, never at home. Kagiso Rabada took 23 wickets across the series, Aiden Markram scored two centuries, AB de Villiers played a noted innings in Gqeberha, Du Plessis made a hundred in Johannesburg while carrying a broken finger, Vernon Philander took six wickets in that match, Australia were beaten by 492 runs in one Test, and South Africa won the series 3-1.
Australia’s tour resumes this week with a team led by Pat Cummins that is described as presenting a markedly different face to the side that arrived in 2018, while South Africa, having triumphed in the World Test Championship final last year, are characterised in the coverage as having moved beyond some of their previous insecurities against Australia. The difficult conversations and “demons” from 2018, however, persist: “Australia looked at that act of sporting dishonesty and saw something much larger reflected back. South Africa looked at the same piece of sandpaper and watched one of their greatest victories disappear behind it.”