Eight years after the incident that rocked world cricket, the Australian team's return to South Africa has revived scrutiny of one of the sport's most infamous episodes. Reporting by this masthead, drawing on conversations with more than 20 members of the 2018 touring party, administrators, player agents and commentators who mostly spoke on condition of anonymity, reveals new details about how Bancroft's actions were caught.
On March 24, 2018, at Newlands, Bancroft took a small sheet of sandpaper from his pocket and attempted to scuff the ball. The ground was covered by more than 30 cameras, 18 of them manned. Alvin Naicker, SuperSport's head of production, told this masthead that the cameras follow the ball during every Test match, adding: "There are so many cameras, I don't know how people think they'll get away with doing anything wrong."
The now-infamous vision was not broadcast live. It was spotted by a replay operator who had been recording footage. "He turned around and said, 'Hey Al, have a look at this'," Naicker recalled. "I looked at it on preview and said, 'What happened there?' ... I look at it and go, 'Wow'."
The scandal triggered a mass exodus from leadership positions in Australian cricket, described as the sport's biggest crisis since World Series Cricket. Steve Smith, who was stripped of the captaincy and banned for 12 months for turning a blind eye to the plan, is the only one of the central trio still in the team. Current skipper Pat Cummins, who was part of the 2018 squad, said: "It was a long time ago, and I don't think there's much more to add. We're concentrating on the tour ahead."
Despite the passage of time, the reporting notes that there are still differing versions of what went down in South Africa and unanswered questions about who knew what and when, and whether other teams were also tampering with the ball.