‘I felt sorry for the guy’: Eight years later, Faf du Plessis revisits one of cricket’s darkest chapters; ‘Sandpaper Gate’ and believes Australia mishandled the scandal

Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft Eight years after Australian cricket was rocked by the Sandpaper Gate scandal, former South Africa captain Faf du Plessis has offered a different perspective on one of the sport’s most controversial episodes.Cameron Bancroft was caught on camera using sandpaper to modify the ball during the 2018 Cape Town Test against South Africa, sparking a scandal that engulfed the Australian team. Steve Smith and David Warner were also punished, with all three players losing leadership positions or facing lengthy bans.But Du Plessis believes that Bancroft in particular has been subjected to an unnecessarily harsh media trial. Speaking to former South African pacer Vernon Philander on the ‘Beyond the Boundary’ podcast, he said his immediate reaction was sympathy for the young Australian batsman.“Bancroft, and honestly, my first instincts with him were, I felt sorry for the guy. When I saw him, he did it, and I was like, ‘Shame.’ He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know how to get the ball backswinging, because pulling a piece of sandpaper out of your pocket with cameras, that’s not the smartest thing to do,” Faf said.The incident quickly escalated off the field. Du Plessis recalled how the South African team waited for Australia’s press conference after today’s match, only to see the situation become even more explosive after the Australian team’s statement.“Then there was this whole incident. I mean, we were sitting after the day’s game. And we were like, it takes about an hour for the team to have to start the press conference. So we’re like, why are they taking so long? What are they doing? And then they issued the statement. And the statement was like putting lightning in the fire and going there. And they were saying, nobody had an idea about it, the captain had no idea. well, what’s going on here, everybody knows what’s going on in the dressing room,” he added.

Du Plessis questions Australia’s response

The scandal eventually saw Smith and Warner receive 12-month bans, while Bancroft was suspended for nine months. Smith and Warner were also removed from their leadership positions.Du Plessis believes Cricket Australia has made the situation materially worse by allowing external pressure, including political intervention, to influence its response.“So I think it was more the way they handled it that caused a lot of noise. And then it came back to Australia where the Australian prime minister got involved. Ex-cricketers were breaking up a team, how can you do that? And we sat there and went, come on, guys. It’s not like you’re the first to do it. You’ve never done it. Like, don’t be a faff. Greenhouse.”He also recalled reaching out to Smith during the fallout because he expected the sentence to last weeks or perhaps a month, rather than a full year.“Everybody has done it at some point in their career. Warner, Smith and Bancroft were the three guys that really got caught. I felt the right thing to do was to send Steve Smith a message and say, ‘Listen, I know you’re trying to do the right thing. You’re going to have some crap next week. I thought it was going to be a week or a month. But it ended up being a year, I’m sorry.’ I shouldn’t take it to mean that unfortunately it should fall on the whole team, but I felt sorry for him because he just didn’t know how to do it and say it’s my show.

Faf says the bans were unnecessary

Du Plessis went further and argued that the players should not have been removed from international cricket for such a long period of time.In his view, the International Cricket Council should have dealt with the disciplinary side of the incident, while Cricket Australia could have imposed financial sanctions instead of lengthy bans.“I think they could have handled it a little bit better. Cricket Australia had other ideas. And they made a big deal out of it. Just let the ICC deal with it. I think if you let politics and other things come into the sport, it’s never going to end well. And that’s the case with the Prime Minister’s politics and everybody’s putting pressure on them. And they feel they have to act. They think they have to prevent something to show that it must be dangerous.”Du Plessis suggested that the penalty could instead have been limited to match fee deductions, allowing players to continue their careers without missing a full year.“I think if they had taken it on the chin that night and said, Cameron would have said, sorry, I did it wrong. I’m young in international cricket and I’m sorry. Which he obviously did. But I think he would have got a 50 per cent match fee from the ICC. Steve Smith would have played the next Test match. But what David Warner played, they would have played all year cricket,” he added.So for du Plessis, the Sandpaper Gate scandal was not just about what happened on the field, but also how the aftermath was handled. He believes the punishment, political pressure and public backlash turned an already serious incident into a much bigger crisis for Smith, Warner and Bancroft.