“Their records and their performances will speak much louder than one incident,” Faf du Plessis on Steve Smith and David Warner after Sandpapergate.
TMG Digital
TELFORD VICE in Manchester
IT’S South Africa versus Australia … it’s a big game, right? Usually, yes. But not on Saturday, when the teams meet at Old Trafford in the last match of the league stage of the men’s World Cup.
South Africa, who have lost five of their seven completed games, have long since staggered out of the reckoning for the semi-finals.
Australia do have reasons to play properly: victory would see them finish at the top of the standings and thus allow them a crack at the fading New Zealanders in the semis.
But that’s a far cry from the cricket these teams have produced in their games against each other over the years, which has often been red in tooth and claw.
A prime example was Australia’s Test series in South Africa in March last year, which veered from David Warner’s on-field abuse of Quinton de Kock, to De Kock’s off-field verbal retaliation, to South Africa’s dressingroom emptying to confront the effing and blinding Warner as he ascended a staircase in fury.
And that was just at Kingsmead.
At St George’s Park, spectators slut-shamed Warner’s wife in a despicable attempt to try and bait him, and Kagiso Rabada fell foul of the match referee for thrusting his shoulder into Steve Smith with aggressive intent.
Only then was it onto Newlands, where a ball-tampering plot masterminded by Warner, agreed to by Smith and carried out by Cameron “Sandpaper” Bancroft, was exposed, leading to bans for all three players.
Sixteen months on, Warner and Smith are back on board — and batting up a storm at the World Cup, scoring two centuries five half-centuries between them.
In fact, the Australians are doing more damage to themselves than their opponents at a World Cup in which they have won seven of the eight games.
Pat Cummins broke Shaun Marsh’s wrist in the nets on Thursday.Minutes earlier, Mitchell Starc felled Glenn Maxwell with a blow to the forearm in the nets on Thursday, minutes before Pat Cummins broke Shaun Marsh’s wrist.
Marsh has been ruled out of the the rest of the tournament, but Maxwell is still in the mix.
“The two guys coming back into their batting line-up [Smith and Warner] has made them a pretty complete team,” Faf du Plessis said on Friday.
“There’s not many holes in their team now and they’ve played some really good cricket at this World Cup.”
He didn’t think Warner and Smith would be remembered chiefly for their cheating, which prompted deep soul searching into all areas of cricket in Australia.
“Their records and their performances will speak much louder than one incident,” Du Plessis said.
“The Australian culture looks like it’s really good, so they have learnt from that and they have made themselves stronger for it and I think that’s a good sign for anyone.
“All of us make mistakes. It’s about how you learn and how you move forward.”
In the aftermath of their awful World Cup campaign, South Africa will hope to do exactly that in the coming months.
Bulletproof Truth 