The 2018 Australian ball-tampering scandal, also known as ‘sandpapergate’, was a notorious cricket cheating incident that involved Australian players tampering with the ball during a Test match against South Africa.<\/p>\n
Australian batter Cameron Bancroft was caught tampering with the ball by rubbing it with sandpaper during South Africa’s second innings of a third Test between the two sides.<\/p>\n
Following the end of that day’s play, Bancroft admitted he attempted to alter the condition of the ball, with Australia captain Steve Smith later admitting to having knowledge of it.<\/p>\n
In the aftermath, Smith stood down as captain, and David Warner also stood down as vice-captain.<\/p>\n
Australia’s coach at the time, Darren Lehmann, also stepped down from his role at the end of that series. Lehmann was however cleared of any wrongdoing in Cricket Australia’s review.<\/p>\n
Smith and Warner were both given 12-month bans from international and domestic cricket by Cricket Australia, while Bancroft was handed a nine-month suspension.<\/p>\n
Warner was deemed to be the orchestrator of the incident, showing Bancroft how to apply the sandpaper to the ball in order to change its condition.<\/p>\n
Smith’s suspension was for not taking steps to prevent the incident, having had knowledge of it.<\/p>\n
Both Smith and Warner earned their places back in the Australia team before Warner retired from international cricket in 2024.<\/p>\n
Smith has since become Australia’s vice-captain under Pat Cummins. Due to Cummins’ recent back injury, Smith captained Australia for the first Test of the 2025-26 Ashes series, which Australia won by eight wickets.<\/p>\n
Bancroft briefly returned to the Australia team for the 2019 Ashes series shortly after his suspension lifted, but has not played international cricket since.<\/p>\n
In 2021, Cricket Australia reportedly reponed an investigation into the case after Bancroft hinted that some bowlers knew about the incident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2018 Australian ball-tampering scandal, also known as ‘sandpapergate’, was a notorious cricket cheating incident that involved Australian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-281581","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281581\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}