Warner asked me to tamper with ball, says Bancroft
MEL BOU R N E : Banned Austral ian player Cameron Bancroft on Wednesday confirmed David Warner asked him to alter the ball during the tampering scandal in South Africa and said he went along with it “to fit in”.
Bancrof t was seen using sandpaper to try to rough up the ball in the Cape Town Test in March, receiving a nine-month ban from international and domestic cricket for his part in an incident that rocked the sport.
Warner and then captain Steve Smith were exiled for a year after all three were found to be involved.
A Cricket Australia investigation pointed to Warner as the mastermind and Bancroft revealed more detai ls in an interview with former Australia wicketkeeper Adam Gilchrist on Fox Sports.
“Dave suggested to me to carry the action out on the ball given the situation we were in the game and I didn’t know any better,” said Bancroft, whose ban runs out this weekend.
“I didn’t know any bet ter because I just wanted to fit in and feel valued really. As simple as that.
“The decision was based around my values, what I valued at the time, and I valued fitting in ... you hope that fitting in earns you respect and with that, I guess, there came a pretty big cost for the mistake.”
At the time, Bancroft had been forging a new Australian Test opening partnership with the more experienced Warner. But he made clear he did not consider himself a victim.
“I had a choice and I made a massive mistake and that is what is i n my c ont r o l ,” s a i d Bancrof t , w h o admit ted he o f t en pondered wha t would have happene d i f h e h ad said no, and concluded it was a no- win situation.
“I would have gone to bed and I would have felt like I had let everybody down. I would have felt like I had let the team down. I would have left like I had hurt our chances to win the game of cricket.” Last week Smith also opened up as he begins to re- emerge into public life, distancing himself from the plot while admitting he failed as a captain by turning a blind eye. Asked what happened in the changing rooms at Cape Town before Bancroft attempted to cheat, he said: “For me in the room, I walked past something and had the opportunity to stop it and I didn’t do it and that was my leadership failure. “It was the potential for something to happen and it went on and happened out in the field,” he added.
“I had the opportunity to stop it at that point rather than say, ‘ I don’t want to know anything about it’.”
A scathing independent review into the incident blamed Cricket Aust ral ia’s “ar rogant and controlling” culture as partly contributing to players bending the rules.
In an interview with Gilchrist on Wednesday, Smith pinpointed a downward slide in the team’s culture to a defeat against South Africa in Hobart in 2016 – their fifth loss in a row.
“I remember James Sutherland and Pat Howard coming into the (changing) rooms there and saying ‘we don’t pay you to play, we pay you to win’,” he said, referring to the former CA chief executive and high performance manager.
“For me that was a little bit disappointing, we don’t go out there to try lose games of cricket, we go out there to try and win and play the best way we can.”
Current CA chief Kevin Roberts said Wednesday it was time to move on. “The events of Cape Town were investigated and dealt with some nine months ago now so there’s no new news there,” he told reporters ahead of the third Test against India in Melbourne.
Bancroft is expected to make his return for the Perth Scorchers in the Big Bash League on Sunday, with Smith and Warner available from late March. — AFP ONE woman ran almost 163 miles in 24 hours, there was a marathon chess duel, while identical twins landed a major international title each in the same sport. Here, AFP Sport also looks at a 16-time world champion and a Hungarian skimmer in five stories you may have missed in 2018:
One day... 163 miles
• American Camille Herron smashed the women’s world 24-hour and 100-mile records in December in an incredible display of endurance. The 36-year- old ran 162.9 miles ( 262km) on a track in Phoenix, beating the best- placed male finisher by over five miles. In an Instagram post, the ultramarathon runner said she used three different pairs of shoes during her recordbreaking effort, going “into the pain cave” for the final five to six hours. But Herron was able to come “back from the dead”, apparently thanks to some tacos and beer. The 37-year- old later told the BBC that she hopes to see ultramarathon running added to the Olympics in the near future.
The golden identical twins
• Russian Dina Averina was utterly dominant at the 2018 rhythmic gymnastics world championships in Sofia, winning five gold medals of a possible six, including the all-around title for the second straight year. Her identical twin sister Arina had to settle for bronze, just three months after pipping Dina to the European championships gold medal in Spain. The 20-year- old sisters have now won a remarkable 18 major championship gold medals between them in only two years. The twins can be told apart by a scar on Arina’s forehead, which she sustained after an accident with a club. Dina has done her best to help the audience, though, sporting a new hairstyle in recent competitions.
Dave suggested to me to carry the action out on the ball given the situation we were in the game and I didn’t know any better. Cameron Bancroft, Australian player
Rapid( ish) chess
• Magnus Carlsen, world chess champion since 2013, retained his title again in November by beating American challenger Fabiano Caruana, but that was only half the story in a marathon battle between the world’s two highest-ranked grandmasters. A seven-hour, 115-move draw in the opening game set the tone in London, as the match ended with 12 consecutive draws for the first time in world chess championship history. That meant rapid- chess tiebreakers, and Norwegian star Carlsen reeled off three straight wins to finally see off Caruana.