Former Australian cricket captain Michael Clarke has emphatically claimed the bowling attack must have known about sandpaper being used on the ball during the now-infamous ball-tampering saga in South Africa in 2018, and accused Cricket Australia of trying to "sweep it under the carpet".
The discussion about 'Sandpaper-gate' has made headlines again, three years after the incident, following Cameron Bancroft's eyebrow-raising response when pressed in a recent interview about whether Australian bowlers knew of the ball-tampering.
"Yeah, obviously what I did benefits bowlers and the awareness around that, probably, is self-explanatory," Bancroft, who is no longer in the Test side, told The Guardian over the weekend.
Bancroft received a nine-month ban for his involvement in the ball-tampering drama, while Steve Smith and David Warner were both stripped of their leadership roles and hit with one-year suspensions which rocked the team and the sport as a whole. No other Australian players were punished over the incident.
When discussing the explosive Bancroft interview on his sports radio show, Clarke was amused that there was any surprise about the 28-year-old's comments.
"A team like that, at the highest level, when the ball is such an important part of the game…I don't think anybody is surprised that more than three people knew about it," Clarke said on Sky Sports Radio's The Big Sports Breakfast.
"[The bowlers have] got to hold the ball to bowl with it.
"So, if there's sandpaper being rubbed on the ball they have to get the ball back to the bowler and the bowler has to hang on to it before he lets it go.
"I can tell you now, if you went and grabbed a pen – just a pen – and put a little '1' somewhere on my cricket bat and you go on top of the handle, on the edge of the bat, on the toe of the bat, on the face, under the grip, anywhere – just a little number one – I would have noticed.
"If you are playing sport at the highest level you know your tools that good it's not funny.
"Can you imagine that ball being thrown back to the bowler and the bowler not knowing about it?
"Please."
Clarke didn't hold back, lashing Cricket Australia over the fallout of the ball-tampering scandal in Cape Town, despite predicting that his statements would cause a "shitfight".
"It's not finished. So much is left unsaid. From the players and even the staff," he said.
"If you know anything about the game of cricket, you know on that day, on that field, of what went down – more than three people had to know about it. Impossible not to have [known].
"It's 100 per cent true.
"I've spoken to players, I've spoken to staff and they're all doing their best to let it go. I get it. I want to let it go too. I hate that it happened to the game of cricket. I hate that it happened to our team, the Australian cricket team. I was devastated at the time."
Clarke said that Cricket Australia's attempt to redirect the narrative after Sandpaper-gate with their documentary The Test on Amazon, was not going to fool the cricket-loving public.
"The problem that Cricket Australia has is the fact that they've tried to sweep it under the carpet and not come out and tell the full story," Clarke said.
"Like they go and do that Netflix flick or whatever it was and show all that – 'Come inside the change room and let's talk about what happened after Sandpaper-gate' – but the public want to go, 'Hang on a second, take me through the few months before Sandpaper-gate, what led up to that, what happened in South Africa' – there's a TV show for you."
Clarke said he felt for Bancroft, who is currently in Durham playing county cricket, and suggested that the real story won't come out until someone tells all in their autobiography.
Before then, the former Test skipper believes players involved will be too scared to say anything contradictory to what's already been said about the scandal.
"There's been so much left unsaid about Sandpaper-gate that it was coming out in someone's book anyway – either David Warner's book, Steve Smith's book, Cameron Bancroft…" Clarke said.
"Over time you actually forget exactly what you say, so these guys are still playing at the highest level, so the only way it doesn't come out of your mouth is if they say 'I'm not going to talk about that.'
"As soon as you open that door and say one thing and it's not exactly what you've said in your press conference or what you've said in the past, there's going to be questions."
There are currently a handful of bowlers still in the Test side that were also on the field in Cape Town during the ball-tampering controversy, including potential future Test skipper Pat Cummins, as well as Nathan Lyon, Josh Hazlewood, and Mitchell Starc.
Ian Chappell today told Wide World of Sports that even if Cummins did know about sandpaper being used on the ball in Cape Town, he should not be retrospectively punished and should still be considered a candidate to be Australia's next Test captain. Chappell said the buck stopped with then captain Smith.
After Bancroft's comments sparked fresh discussion about Sandpaper-gate, Cricket Australia released a statement defending the investigation which took place in 2018 and said they welcomed any fresh information.
"CA has maintained all along that if anyone is in possession of new information in regards to the Cape Town Test of 2018 they should come forward and present it," the statement read.
"The investigation conducted at the time was detailed and comprehensive. Since then, no-one has presented new information to CA that casts doubt on the investigation's findings."
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