'They forgot': Bizarre new theory in Aussie ball-tampering saga
Ian Healy has offered some stunning new insight into Australia’s ball-tampering scandal.
With Steve Smith and David Warner just hours away from being allowed to return to international cricket after a year-long ban, the former Aussie wicketkeeper has revealed why he thinks they were so brazen in their attempts to tamper with the ball.
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According to Healy, the practice of ‘ball management’ had become so common in international cricket that Smith, Warner and Cameron Bancroft didn’t actually realise the weight of their actions.
Healy pointed to the naivety that Smith and Bancroft showed in their initial press conference, in which they lied about certain aspects of what they’d done, including the substance they’d used to alter the ball.
“There are plenty of things pointing towards this being a low-level crime (in the Aussies’ opinion),” Healy told SEN Radio.
“The fact they thought they could go to a press conference and explain themselves — I think they sort of forgot. It (ball tampering) was pretty widespread and they forgot how bad it was.
“I would suggest plenty of other teams were trying everything to get this swing going and that’s why the Australians forgot it was cheating.”
Healy also reckons the umpires should shoulder some of the blame for the whole fiasco.
“I was extremely critical of the umpires and the job they were doing,” Healy said.
“The umpires need to carry the can more than former players because it’s pretty easy to see if the ball’s been tampered with because it starts swinging unusually, quite quickly.
“It was a change in the game that never got policed as being anything but legal.
“The authorities, ie the umpires, have to have a handle on it out there, whether it (the ball) is being scratched, whether it’s being thrown on the ground — which is now not legal but they’re (the players) still doing that — or shined in a certain way.
“I reckon if you’re an umpire it’d be easy to see the ball going a little bit unusually and then have a look at the ball. I reckon you’d be able to find something out.”
Australia to confront past as bans expire
Smith and Warner may wake with some relief on Thursday as they greet the final day of their ball-tampering bans, but the anniversary of their humiliation will otherwise be a sombre milestone for Australia’s cricket fans.
Much has changed since Cricket Australia slapped former captain Smith and his deputy Warner with 12-month suspensions for the Cape Town scandal, while giving Bancroft a lighter nine-month sentence as the rookie opener caught up in a plot driven by others.
Captains, coaches and a string of senior cricket executives have left or been sent packing, their replacements pledging to win back fans with fair play as much as series wins and silverware.
Bancroft, the man who hastily trousered a piece of sandpaper in the Newlands field to try to hide his team’s shame, has been named captain of English county side Durham, three months after fingering Warner as the ball-tampering mastermind in a TV interview in December.
The more circumspect Warner has largely kept his counsel while returning to one of cricket’s biggest stages at the Indian Premier League, smashing 85 in a 53-ball blitz in his first outing for Sunrisers Hyderabad on Sunday.
Smith also returned to the IPL spotlight in defeat for the Rajasthan Royals, joining Warner on a mission to reclaim a spot in the one-day international team he once captained in the leadup to the showpiece World Cup in England.
Efforts to smooth the pair’s rehabilitation have been in train for months, and culminated in a reunion with Aaron Finch’s squad in the United Arab Emirates a week-and-a-half ago.
with Reuters
