The Sandpaper Gate during the Cape Town Test of Australia’s 2018 tour to South Africa, shocked the cricketing fraternity worldwide.
The third umpire of the match, Ian Gould, was the first few ones to access the visuals of Cameron Bancroft using sandpaper to tamper the ball.
Gould came out conceding that the Australian cricket team played the ‘hard way’ in an uncontrollable manner two to three years before the Sandpaper Gate.
“I didn’t realise what the repercussions would be. If you look back on it now, Australia were out of control probably two years, maybe three years, before that, but not in this sense. Maybe – behavioural, chatty, being pretty average people,” Gould told Daily Telegraph recently.
Many cricket pundits slammed the Aussie culture, which ultimately led to the culmination of the scandal at Cape Town.
“But when it came into my earpiece I didn’t think the prime minister of Australia was going to come tumbling down on these three guys. All I thought was – Jesus, how do I put this out to the guys on the field without making it an overreaction,” added Gould.
After inspecting the status of the ball, Gould stated that the sandpaper had no major effect on the ball. “If you saw the balls, you would get it completely wrong. At the end of the day, the sandpaper didn’t get on that ball. They were working to get the ball to be pristine. Once they’d got one side bigger and shinier, that’s when the sandpaper was coming in,” the 62-year-old revealed.
In the aftermath of the infamous scandal, the disgraced Aussie trio of Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft served 8-12 months ban sanctioned by Cricket Australia (CA).
The incident even led to the Australian Prime Minister giving scathing comments on the players, which blew the matter out of proportion.
