Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft admit that they tried to tamper the ball.
Advertisement
At Johannesburg, Australia will be led by Tim Paine while Steve Smith who has been suspended for one Test match by the ICC will of course be unavailable. After Smith and his deputy David Warner were banned from the final Test against South Africa, it is now being speculated that Cricket Australia can punish Smith and Warner with a life ban. The incident has been met with astonishment in Australia, with the protagonists – Smith, his vice-captain David Warner and opening batsman Cameron Bancroft – lambasted in the media under headlines nearly universally trumpeting the word “Shame”.
Smith, who is on a $1.9-million contract with Indian Premier League side Rajasthan Royals, was also replaced as skipper of the IPL outfit on Monday, ahead of the season starting April 7.
Australian all-rounder Moises Henriques dropped a new bomb in the on-going ball-tampering scandal, as he claimed that Steve Smith is lying about the ball-tampering plan.
Rumours emerged on Tuesday that Lehmann was set to resign, while Smith and Warner are thought to be looking at six to twelve month bans. “We have written to cricket Australia & are waiting for their reply”, Shukla said. Again, that’s been seen as insufficient after he was caught in the act of tampering with the ball on the field by television cameras in a highly embarrassing moment for a team seen as a giant in world cricket.
“It has got right out of control, it should have no place in the game, I want to be very clear about this”. The move of Sutherland going to South Africa indicates that CA is planning harsher penalties on its players.
When Sutherland scheduled a news conference at noon Sunday in front of Cricket Australia’s corporate offices in Melbourne, commentators and former cricketers wondered whether Smith and other team members would be fired or sanctioned immediately.
“I can not think that has been come up with over lunch in Cape Town”, Vaughan told BBC Sport.
Lehmann took over from South African Mickey Arthur in 2013 in wave of national team appointments that removed foreign coaches in favour of home-grown alternatives in cricket, soccer and rugby union.
“I can’t believe the leadership group has made the decision to do this, that they’ve gone and got the young kid who’s played is eighth test match to do that”.
Smith was handed a one-match ban and fined 100 per cent of his match fee following the ball-tampering incident. This isn’t the end of such controversies but Cricket Australia has to take full responsibility for making the game ungentlemanly. There is a possibility that both Bancroft and Smith could face the ICC music.
Playing in just his second Test, De Villiers took six for 43 and bowled South Africa to an improbable five-run victory in a match in which they had been forced to follow on and in which Shane Warne had taken 12 wickets for Australia.
Advertisement
“All that is out the window in this culture of venom and bile that they spew out every time they play”.
