The infamous ball-tempering incident during the third Test between Australia and South Africa has sent shockwaves across the cricketing world. During the Cape Town Test match cameraman captured the images when young opener of Australia Cameron Bancroft took a yellow object out of his pocket while fielding in the post-lunch session and appearing to rub it on the ball. Later, television footage showed that he was trying to hide that object.
While talking to press conference at the end of day’s play, Australian captain Steven Smith along with Bancroft confessed to hatching the tampering plot in connivance with his two teammates in order to outfox the opponent team. It was also revealed that vice captain of Australia and opening batsman David Warner was also part of the plan.
Whole incident captured the attention of people around the world. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in his statement said that incident has embarrassed the country. He termed the incident as shocking and asked officials of Cricket Australia to probe the incident on immediate basis to determine the guilty players in the infamous incident. As a result, Smith and Warner were stripped of from their roles as captain and vice captain and were banned from international and domestic cricket for a year. Cameron has been suspended for nine months. Incident was called as disgrace in Australia as former players suggested strict punishments for the ones involved in it. Huge public outrage was also witnessed on the whole episode of defaming Australian cricket. Steven Smith, David Warner and Bancroft all have accepted their role in tempering the ball and while talking in a press conference with tears in their eyes have asked for forgiveness from people of Australia for defaming the country. Now some are terming one year ban is harsh punishment, and some are considering it appropriate. In both cases, one thing is certain that it has set the example for other players to not indulge in unethical practices while playing the game that is termed as ‘gentlemen’s game’.
If we look at the history of ball-tempering in cricket, several bowlers from various countries have been accused of it as some were penalized and some escaped with warnings. Though International Cricket Council had banned Steven Smith for just one Test match, it was cricket Australia that banned him for one year. It is high time that ICC and cricket boards of countries devise stricter laws so such occurrences could be prevented in the future.