Faf:F we spied on Aussie fielders
FORMER South African captain Faf du Plessis has made the stunning claim that the Proteas suspected Australia of ball-tampering long before the ‘Sandpapergate’ scandal.
News Corp obtained excerpts from the 38-year-old’s autobiography ‘Faf: Through Fire’, which is scheduled to be released on October 28.
In it, du Plessis writes that the South African team started spying on Australian fielders through binoculars in the changeroom.
He claimed South Africa suspected Australia of ball tampering from the first Test of the series, a claim “vehemently disputed” by Australian sources.
“During the first Test in Durban, the Australian pace attack had got the ball to reverse insanely,” du P less is writes. “Mitchell Starc claimed nine wickets and, although I regard him as one of the best proponents of reverseswing bowling I have ever seen or faced, those deliveries in Durban were borderline unplayable.
“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.”
Du Plessis does not specifically accuse Starc of anything untoward and did go on to reference both his and South Africa’s own past incidents of ball-tampering, including when he used a mint to shine the ball to make it swing in late 2016 in Australia.