It’s like underarm bowling incident of 40 years ago: Mark Taylor believes bowlers didn’t know about ball being tampered
Taylor also went on to defend Cricket Australia’s investigation into the matter. He said that there was a gap of four days between the Cape Town Test and the next match, hence, the CA did what they could.
Former Australian captain Mark Taylor has backed the Australian bowling unit after the 2018 sandpapergate was once again brought under the spotlight by batsman Cameron Bancroft. In an interview with the Guardian last week, Bancroft had hinted that the Aussie bowlers might have known about ball-tampering.
In response to this statement, several former cricketers opined that the bowlers would have known about what was going to happen. However, the Aussie bowlers - Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc and Nathan Lyon – who played the Newlands Test in South Africa issue a joint statement, denying any knowledge of tampering with the ball.
While speaking to Channel 9, Taylor said, “The bleeding obvious to me is they didn't know that it had been doctored. You only have to read what they said during the week. If I could just read it out: 'We did not know a foreign substance was taken on to the field to alter the condition of the ball'. And as they said, the two umpires in the game did not change the ball.”
“So, there was an attempt to change the condition of the ball but they didn't get to do it. The umpire said, 'That ball's still fine, let's get on with it'. So, they did not know,” he added.
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Taylor also went on to defend Cricket Australia’s investigation into the matter. He said that there was a gap of four days between the Cape Town Test and the next match, hence, the CA did what they could.
“I don’t think they (Cricket Australia) will ever be able to put it away. It is a bit like the underarm bowling incident of 40 years ago. This will continue to burn and bubble away. The question about whether Cricket Australia did enough three years ago - yes.
“We had a four-day window between the Cape Town Test and the start of the fourth Test, which was at Johannesburg. To send someone over, do an investigation, make a report and make some decisions around that. That was to send the three players home and then to deal with them. It wasn’t an ideal situation. It would have been great to have six months to do all this. We had a four-day window, and in that time, we got it right,” he said.
