Tim Paine accuses South Africa of engaging in ball-tampering after 'infamous' Cape Town Test

It has been more than four years since the infamous Cape Town Test between South Africa and Australia rattled the cricket fraternity, with the latter being accused of ball-tampering. Television footage showed Cameron Bancroft engaging in the conduct as he brushed the ball using sandpaper. Later, it was revealed that then-Test skipper Steven Smith and vice-captain David Warner were also involved in the same, with the latter being the mastermind behind it, leading to the ban of the trio for up to a year. Meanwhile, former Australian Test skipper Tim Paine has recently admitted that the Proteas, too, have been engaged in the same since that infamous Test.

In his autobiography, The Paid Price, Paine denied any team meeting regarding the tampering and that no other team member had any clue about it. He also revealed that he was shocked to see Bancroft engaging in the conduct and hiding the sandpaper inside his pants before the umpires confronted the latter. "I was thinking, 'what the f**k'. A sense of dread came over us all," he authored, reports ESPNCricinfo.

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However, Paine acknowledged that he saw the South Africans doing the same in the subsequent Test and briefly watched the same on the big screen before the footage was withdrawn, as they took it to the umpires. However, no action was taken on the same, and the footage was lost and never found again.

"I saw it happen in the fourth Test of that series. Think about that. After everything that had happened in Cape Town, after all the headlines and bans, carry on. I was standing at the bowlers' end in the next Test when a shot came up on the screen of a South African player at mid-off having a massive crack at the ball," documented Paine.

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"The television director, who had played an active role in catching Cam, immediately pulled the shot off the screen. We went to the umpires about it, which might seem a bit poor, but we'd been slaughtered and were convinced they'd been up to it since the first Test. But the footage got lost. As it would," Paine added.

Paine also felt that Warner was targeted unfairly. At the same time, the latter had every right to be upset with the entire episode, especially after South African wicketkeeper-batter Quinton de Kock made controversial remarks about Warner's wife, Candice. He even confessed that the crowd was targeting Warner and his family.

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"I was holding them apart, and I know how it unfolded. I don't know how [Warner] kept his cool in those situations, and on reflection, I feel the team let him down by not offering him more support. I can see now he was masking a lot of pain, and we should have known it," noted Paine.

On the other hand, former South African skipper Faf du Plessis revealed that the Proteas had a sense of ball tampering during the Durban Test when seamer Mitchell Starc generated the "borderline unplayable" deliveries with tremendous reverse swings. "We suspected that someone had been nurturing the ball too much to get it to reverse so wildly, and we watched the second Test at St George's through binoculars so that we could follow the ball more closely while Australia was fielding. When we noticed that the ball was going to David Warner quite often - our changing room must have looked like a birdwatching hide as we peered intently through our binoculars," he wrote in his biography, Faf: Through Fire.