Contrite Smith says he won’t resign from captaincy

STEVE Smith will not resign from the Australian captaincy despite admitting his team deliberately tried to tamper with the ball in an orchestrated attempt to gain an advantage on an eventful third day of the third Test against South Africa at Newlands.

Smith’s admission came

after Australian opener Cameron Bancroft was charged by the International Cricket Council for “trying to change the ball condition” after television footage on the big screen at the ground showed Bancroft trying to hide a yellow piece of tape used to collect granules of sand from the pitch inside his pants. “The leadership

group

knew about it, we spoke about it at lunch,” Smith told a packed media room. “I am not proud of what has happened. It’s not in the spirit of the game. My integrity and the integrity of the team has been damaged and rightfully so. It’s not on and it won’t happen again, I can promise you.” After seeing it on the big screen too, the on-field umpires Nigel Llong and Richard Illingworth called Bancroft over, only for the Australian to pull out a black piece of material, customarily used to clean sunglasses. The umpires did not change the ball or penalise the Australians with five runs, which is the mandatory on-field penalty for illegally changing the condition of the ball. “We had a discussion during the break, I saw an opportunity to use some tape to collect some granules from the rough patches on the wicket. And try to change the ball condition. It didn’t work. I guess once I was cited on the screens that I done that. I panicked quite a lot, and that obviously resulted in me shoving it down my trousers,” Bancroft admitted.