Du Plessis back at scene of triumph and trial

“When it happened we thought that was harsh on the players ’cause there’s been so many players who have been in similar boats.” – Faf du Plessis on ball-tampering bans.

TMG Digital

TELFORD VICE in London

AUSTRALIANS won’t want to know this, but the most successful active batsman in one-day internationals between their team and South Africa is again in their midst. And he’s not one of theirs.

Already they don’t like him for all sorts of reasons. For batting for more than a day to deny them a Test victory. For the tightness of his shirts. For what he has done to the ball while he has had a mint in his mouth.

Now he’s back in Australia, and if he leads South Africa to victory in the second ODI on Friday the Aussies will have another reason to sneer as they say his name: Faf du Plessis.

He led South Africa to success in their Test series there in November 2016, and his team are one win away from engineering their second series triumph among the people who love to despise him.

Better yet, Du Plessis is back in Adelaide — where he made his debut in 2012 and batted for more than 11 hours for his scores of 78 and 110 not out, where he came under massive pressure in 2016 after footage emerged of him and the mint and the ball during the previous Test in Hobart, and scored an undefeated 118.

The shirts? They’ve always been tight, and not only in Australia.

“It was a bit different to this; there were a few more cameras around,” Du Plessis told reporters with a smile in Adelaide on Thursday, remembering what he was up against in the beautiful southern Gothic city two years ago.

“But I love coming to Adelaide. This ground is probably my favourite in the world when it comes to playing cricket here. I’ve got some extremely good memories here.”

Ever the diplomat, he hastened to add: “This and Newlands are my two favourite grounds.”

Actually, that could go for most grounds on which he has clashed with the Aussies. Du Plessis is the highest runscorer among current players in ODIs involving South Africa and Australia, and he has the highest average. He is one of only three players to have scored three centuries in games between these teams. 

The others are Herschelle Gibbs, who is long gone as a player, and David Warner, who is serving a ban for masterminding a ball-tampering plot during the Newlands Test in March.

That punishment was handed down not by the International Cricket Council but by Cricket Australia (CA).

So it’s worth wondering where Du Plessis’s career might be had he been Australian, considering he has twice been done for the same offence as Warner.

Did he think Warner and cohorts Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft, who were banned by CA for between nine months and a year, had been hard done by?

“It’s difficult for me to comment on that,” Du Plessis said. “When it happened we thought that was harsh on the players ’cause there’s been so many players who have been in similar boats.

“But I wasn’t [in Australia] to understand how the people were affected by it or offended by it. The backlash that we saw in South Africa was massive.

“We could see it’s probably bigger in Australia than it has been or will be anywhere else in the world.”

Du Plessis had his own taste of how big this kind of thing can get the last time he was in Adelaide, when the South Africa players were hounded by a large media pack at their hotel and at the ground, and the team’s over-zealous security staff brutally manhandled reporters at the airport. But, on Thursday, he spoke into only three microphones. 

“My character was tested through that week,” he said of his previous visit. “It was good to learn that I had resilience.

“My outcome for that week was to tell myself that if I get through this it will prove a lot about my character.”

It also proved to Du Plessis that the Australian press take no prisoners.

“As good as the press are [to Australia’s team] when they’re playing well, when the performance is not there there’s the same amount of hype around that.”

That means South Africa can count the Aussie press as allies on this tour, what with them asking all sorts of awkward questions about a team who have lost 17 of their last 19 completed ODIs.

“Perth flop points to a long, lonely summer of Australian cricket,” ran the headline in the Melbourne Age after South Africa won the first ODI by six wickets on Sunday, and the reporting on the ructions that have followed the Newlands Test has been unflinching.

But some Australians will take as the ultimate sign of decline Du Plessis’ answer to the standard question on what changes South Africa might make for Friday’s game.

“We’re still looking at combinations,” he said. “The obvious thing would be to play the same team, but we’re constantly thinking about how we can get guys more experienced for the World Cup.

“We’re still fine-tuning that balance.”

What? Using mighty Australia, five times the World Cup champions, including currently, to experiment? How bloody dare the man?

Perhaps. But the more relevant question is about how far the Australians have fallen.

Du Plessis gets his wish as ICC hike ball-tampering sanctions

TMG Digital

TELFORD VICE in Lisbon

FAF du Plessis got his wish on Monday when the International Cricket Council (ICC) exponentially increased the punishment for ball-tampering.

Those who fall foul of “illegally changing the condition of the ball” in future could be banned for six Tests or a dozen one-day internationals. The current maximum suspension is one Test or two ODIs.

That’s the upshot of the heaviest sentence for a level three offence being increased from eight to 12 suspension points. 

The new measures were approved at the ICC’s 75th annual conference in Dublin, which ended on Monday, and will come into force in October once they have been formalised in the next version of the code of conduct.

Asked on Sunday whether the ICC should hike the penalties for ball-tampering, Du Plessis said: “They have to. It’s happening too often. They need to do that [change the regulations] as quickly as possible.

“The penalties need to be harsher for ball-tampering.”

Du Plessis makes an unusual advocate for harsher sanctions considering he has been found guilty of ball-tampering twice in less than five years.

The ICC’s hand was no doubt forced by Cricket Australia’s (CA) serious punishment of Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft after the exposure of their plot to roughen the ball using sandpaper during the Newlands Test against South Africa in March.

CA immediately sacked Smith and Warner as Australia’s captain and vice-captain and banned them for a year, while Bancroft was suspended for nine months.

Warner will not be considered for leadership positions in future, and Smith and Bancroft not for two years.

The ICC docked Smith his match fee and banned him for a match and Bancroft lost 75% of his fee and earned three demerit points. Warner got away Scott free.

Cricket’s code of conduct will include three new offences, according to an ICC release: “personal abuse”, uttering an “audible obscenity”, and “attempting to obtain an unfair advantage” by “cheating other than ball-tampering”.

“It is vital that there is a strong deterrent to both players and administrators to ensure we have high standards of conduct in our game,” the release quoted ICC chair Shashank Manohar as saying.

“We have more than a billion fans and we must not give any of them any reason to doubt the high levels of integrity within our sport.”

Stump microphones will be allowed to remain live even when the ball is dead; a departure from the current guidelines, which suggest they be turned down between deliveries.

That has allowed teams who sledge their opponents — primarily Australia — to get away with verbal abuse.

The ICC will consider how a national board could “be held liable for its players’ behavior with appropriate sanctions to be imposed on boards when the accumulated number of offences by its players exceed certain thresholds”.

That could force a rethink of most boards, Cricket South Africa included, opting to support and defend their players when they get into trouble with the ICC.

Appeals of disciplinary decisions will in future attract an advance fee that will be refunded if the challenge succeeds.

“There is a clear desire here to reclaim cricket’s unique proposition as a game that people can trust in and for us all to live the spirit of cricket in a way that is relevant in the 21st century,” the release quoted ICC chief executive David Richardson as saying.

“ … the board agreed that members should treat each other with respect as well as ensuring that their teams respect each other, the game and the match officials.”

What the Faf? Du Plessis, twice guilty of ball-tampering, calls for tougher sanctions

“The penalties need to be harsher for ball-tampering.” – Faf du Plessis

TMG Digital

TELFORD VICE in Lisbon

YOU would be forgiven for thinking Faf du Plessis was a poacher turned gamekeeper after his comments on ball-tampering at a press conference in Cape Town on Sunday.

“They have to,” South Africa’s captain said when he was asked if the International Cricket Council (ICC) should change the penalties for those found guilty of the practice.

“It’s happening too often. They need to do that [change the regulations] as quickly as possible.

“The penalties need to be harsher for ball-tampering.”

Before he fielded questions, Du Plessis was briefed by a Cricket South Africa official on Dinesh Chandimal’s situation.

Sri Lanka’s captain was banned for the third Test against West Indies in Barbados last month after losing his appeal on ball-tempering charges.

During the second Test in St Lucia, Chandimal used saliva from his mouth — which contained a sweet — to polish the ball: a contravention of the laws of cricket.

The Sri Lankans remonstrated with the match officials when they were told of the charge, which delayed play for two hours.

The latter could mean Chandimal is ruled out for the two Tests South Africa will play in Sri Lanka this month.

His hearing on a “contrary conduct” violation — to which he has already admitted — is set for July 10, or two days before the first Test in Galle.

If some of that sounds familiar, it’s because Du Plessis was done for ball-tempering in exactly the same way as Chandimal during South Africa’s tour of Australia in November 2016.

Du Plessis appealled and lost, and has since maintained that cricket’s regulations should make a distinction between methods used to polish the ball — currently no foreign substance may be employed — and altering its surface in other ways, such as scratching it.

In a Test against Pakistan in Dubai in October 2013, Du Plessis was found guilty of illegally changing the condition of the ball by rubbing it on a zip in his whites. 

So Australians will no doubt label his statements on Sunday as hypocritical.

They will also point to the severe punishment dished out to Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft when they used sandpaper to roughen the ball during the Newlands Test in March.

Cricket Australia hit all three players with far heavier punishment, including lengthy bans, than the ICC could enforce under its current regulations.

“There’s too many grey areas when it comes to the ICC and the rules,” Du Plessis said.

“One, you want clarity. Two, you want consistency. That’s definitely not been part of that body of laws for a while now.

“A lot of captains have been speaking about it for a lot of years.”

Du Plessis may get his wish: the ICC’s cricket committee recommended in May that ball-tampering attract tougher sanctions.

“Hopefully when they do bring in these new things there’ll be a lot of clarity and, most importantly, consistency,” Du Plessis said.

Justin Langer is Australia’s new coach. Oh dear …

Once he glued his gloves to his bat handle to sort out grip problems, now he spends a month a year bearded and barefoot.

TMG Digital

TELFORD VICE in Bangalore

SOUTH Africans know all about Justin Langer, some from having had the unpleasant experience of playing against him.

Langer, who has replaced Darren Lehmann as Australia’s coach in the ongoing fallout from the ball-tampering debacle, won 11 of his 105 Test caps against the South Africans — some of whom remember him for his incessant and unimaginatively ugly sledging more than his fiercely determined batting.

But all cricketminded South Africans will remember Langer more favourably for what he didn’t do at the Wanderers in April 2006: bat.

Reports from Australia say Langer’s teammates would avoid him if he they thought he was about to ask them to join him for additional training because he would keep going until they were close to exhaustion, but also in light of the relentless seriousness he brought to everything he did.

His obsessive approach led him to glue his gloves to his bat handle to sort out problems with his grip.

Apparently, Langer has calmed down since taking to heart the advice given him late in his playing career by one of the most laid back men ever to pick up a bat, New Zealand’s John Wright: “Young man, you need to chill out.”

But he has interpreted even that to within an inch of its sensibility: Langer now prefers to spend one full month of every year bearded and barefoot.

Good luck getting into the insufferably conservative member’s enclosure at most of Australia’s grounds like that, nevermind at Lord’s.

There was no lack of seriousness at the Wanderers a dozen years ago, when Langer’s involvement in his 100th Test appeared over after he ducked into the first ball of the innings — a Makhaya Ntini bouncer that felled and concussed him.

Days of headaches, vomiting and general frailty followed, but against the advice of doctors who told him he could die if he was hit again in the match and unbeknown to his captain, Ricky Ponting, Langer was padded up and good to go on the fifth morning when Australia’s eighth wicket fell with 17 runs needed for victory.

Happily for all concerned Nos. 8 and 10, Brett Lee and Michael Kasprowicz, took the Aussies home and the threat to Langer’s life averted.

In less than six years as coach of Western Australia, where he lives by mantras like “no assholes” and “character over cover drives”, Langer has engineered five white-ball titles and trips to two Sheffield Shield finals.

There are thus reasons to applaud as well as be appalled that he is again part of international cricket.

But will Langer help the Australians learn the lesson that their compatriots, who have driven the backlash against ball-tamperers and conspirators Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft, will not put up with a team who won’t stop at destroying their integrity by trying to cheat their way to victory?

“What I know is we should be very, very proud of our history of Australian cricket,” Langer told reporters at his unveiling on Thursday. “We’ve been not only good cricketers but generally good people.

“It’s not just about how we play our cricket, it’s also about being good citizens and good Australians.”

Oh dear.

So the same old misplaced nationalism, too easily conflated with patriotism — which has no place in sport — will continue.

“The public will be disappointed if we don’t play hard competitive cricket. That said, we can also modify our behaviours.

“I was lucky to play with great competitors. We talk about Allan Border, Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Adam Gilchrist and Steve Waugh. They played hard but they were also outstanding people.

“We modify our behaviours a bit so that it’s not angry or not over aggressive but we’re still aggressive in the mindset that we play with the bat and the ball.”

Change “a bit”? Border and McGrath — among the most miserable bastards as players — are “outstanding people”? 

Oh dear.

“We know all know what the acceptable behaviours are. There’s a difference between the competitiveness and aggression and we have to be careful with that.”

Oh dear.

“Everyone knows the difference between right and wrong, that’s simple. We get taught that from when you’re a little kid from your parents, through school.

“If our players literally stick to that, right or wrong, they’ll be OK, I think.”

The Australians have no clue what “the acceptable behaviours” are, neither on their most recent tour to South Africa nor — if you ask his opponents — when Langer played.

As for “everyone” knowing what’s right and wrong, you might have thought that included their former captain and vice-captain.

Oh dear.

Think again Cricket Australia.

Warner leaves it late, but accepts ball-tampering fate

TMG Digital

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

DAVID Warner left it late but he has accepted the consequences of masterminding the ball-tampering scandal that took the wheels off Australia’s tour to South Africa.

“I have today let Cricket Australia [CA] know that I fully accept the sanctions imposed on me,” Warner wrote on his Twitter account on Thursday. “I am truly sorry for my actions and will now do everything I can to be a better person, teammate and role model.”

Warner made his announcement just more than an hour before the deadline CA had set for appeals, and a day after co-conspirators Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft said they would not challenge their sentences.

Earlier reports said Warner was considering challenging his sanction, while the Australian Cricketers’ Association have criticised the severity of the punishment the players have been given.

A CA investigation found Warner had hatched a plot to roughen the ball with sandpaper during the third Test at Newlands last month.

The plan had been made with captain Smith’s knowledge and was carried out by Bancroft, the most junior member of the team.

The conspiracy was exposed when television cameras spotted Bancroft taking the sandpaper from his pocket.

CA banned Smith from playing international and senior domestic cricket for a year and will not consider him for leadership positions for a year after that, while Bancroft was banned for nine months.

Warner, who arrived in South Africa as Australia’s vice-captain, copped the heaviest punishment: banned for a year and told he would never again be in a position of leadership in the national team.

Darren Lehmann was not implicated, but he said last Thursday that the fourth Test at the Wanderers, which ended on Tuesday, would be his last as Australia’s coach.

The series had been level at 1-1 going to Newlands, where South Africa beat their clearly rattled opponents by 322 runs.

The home side triumphed by 492 runs at the Wanderers — their biggest win in terms of runs, Australia’s second-heaviest defeat and the heaviest since 1928, and the fourth-biggest victory by runs in Test history — to clinch their first series against the Aussies in this country since 1970. 

Sponsors have deserted CA and the players in the wake of the saga, which has also cost Smith and Warner their lucrative deals with Indian Premier League franchises.

But the players will continue to be paid their CA retainers, in Smith’s case the equivalent of R17.9-million a year and Warner R12.6-million.

Warner’s decision means there will no need for hearings, which could have further damaged CA’s reputation.

The organisation is conducting a review of the culture of the team, which will also focus on the management and board.

Cricket Australia go where ICC fear to tread

The code of conduct rules are the problem. Or is it how they are enforced?

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE in Johannesburg

THERE are things you don’t say unless you want to start a fight. They involve mothers and sisters and wives, and Virat Kohli’s repertoire of these choice words is far more varied than anything David Warner could come up with.

Cricket matches have never been genteel, but never have they been so feral. Maybe that’s why Virat Kohli feels free to swear with impunity on the field. Even amateur, English-speaking lipreaders are in no doubt about what he says so often it has become his mantra.

Despite provisions in the code of conduct against swearing, maybe Kohli knows he will get away with it because he captains a team of untouchables.

India, along with England and Australia, are part of cricket’s big three. But there is only a big one.

Without India cricket wouldn’t be nearly as lucrative. And the golden child of the goose that lays the golden eggs is Kohli. So he can pretty much do as he likes.

But Kohli’s potty mouth going unpunished is as nothing compared to the disparity between the reactions of the International Cricket Council (ICC) and Cricket Australia (CA) to the ball-tampering scandal that has reduced Steve Smith and Darren Lehmann to tears and cost them along with Warner and Cameron Bancroft their jobs.

The ICC fined Smith his entire match fee for the Newlands test and banned him for the Wanderers test.

Bancroft lost three-quarters of his match fee and was handed three demerit points, not quite a ban.

Warner and Lehmann weren’t charged.

CA banned Smith for a year and will not put him in a leadership position in the national team for another year, and suspended Bancroft for nine months.

Warner, who is also out for a year, will never again be Australia’s vice-captain.

Lehmann, citing Smith’s televised breakdown on his return to Sydney, resigned saying the Wanderers test would be the last of his five-year tenure as coach.

At least one prominent cricketer concurred with the theory that players who were not Indian, English or Australian got a raw disciplinary deal from the ICC.

“I’ve been talking about that for quite a while and I don’t think that it’s wrong to say that all I’ve been asking for is consistency,” Faf du Plessis said.

“This is very strong what happened here, but I do believe that before this series there were a lot of questions from us as a team and me as a captain that with the conversations that were happening with us and the communication from their side, you don’t feel that the same communication happens to certain players and teams around the world.

“I stress that every time I get an opportunity with the match referees or umpires, that all I’m asking for is that teams get measured in the same way.”

Had CA outdone the ICC in acting so strongly?

“They’ve shown that they have. That’s probably why the ICC is relooking it.”

Minutes before Du Plessis spoke, the ICC announced that it had “commissioned a wide-ranging review into player behaviour, the spirit in which the game is played and the code of conduct” with the aim of “contemporising the standards expected of player behaviour and developing a culture of respect”.

ICC chief executive Dave Richardson, who will lead the review, got his retaliation in first to Du Plessis’ charge.

“The match officials work within the framework of the current ICC code of conduct and sanctions are applied according to that,” a release quoted Richardson as saying. “To go outside of this current framework would be to disregard the rules.”

The rules, then, are the problem. Or is it how they are enforced?

As things stand, three each of India’s and England’s players and five of Australia’s have demerit points — totals of seven, four and seven points respectively.

New Zealand? None, and no offences have been committed against them.

South Africa? Nine players, 16 points.

Something is wrong with that picture.

Just and unjust deserts for cheating Aussie bastards

If Smith and Bancroft were sincerely sorry they wouldn’t have lied at their press conference at Newlands on Saturday.

TMG Digital

TELFORD VICE in Johannesburg

COULD everybody calm down? No-one has died. No blood has been spilled. Nothing that would attract the attention of the police has occurred.

What has happened is that two Australians have admitted, publicly, to cheating in a cricket match.

Those two as well as another have been sent home, their honour, reputation, ego and careers between their legs.

Two have been banned from playing international and senior domestic cricket for a year by Cricket Australia (CA), and the other for nine months.

One will never again be in a leadership position in Australia’s team.

The others will be ineligible for leadership for two years, mood permitting.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India have banned the two who have Indian Premier League contracts from playing in this year’s tournament.

Each of them owe CA 100 hours of voluntary service in community cricket.

But it’s not all bad: the three will be allowed to play club cricket.

And they will continue to be paid their retainers by CA.

In Steve Smith’s case that’s the equivalent of R17.9-million a year, in David Warner’s R12.6-million.

So don’t expect them to have to sell cellphone chargers at the robots to make ends meet.

That’s about it. Film at 11.

Take away the wall to wall noise generated by the ball-tampering scandal, and that’s all there is.

In the real world this would be no big deal. But, of course, we’re not dealing with the real world; we’re dealing with a business that has sold itself to its customer base — you, me, our likeminded friends — on grand ideas of fair play and excellence.

We’re dealing with something that taps into the better memories of our childhoods and hijacks our passions in the cause of exposing us to as much marketing as possible.

The players’ role in sport is to move the ball, as excitingly as possible, from one advertising billboard to the next.

Sport is not about fair play. It’s about making money. To make money, it helps to win.

To win against opponents who are playing better than you, you need to cheat.

Crucially, you need to not get caught cheating.

If you are caught, you will face what Smith, Warner and Cameron Bancroft have faced since Saturday: the curdled, noxious anger of people who carry on as if they have exposed a partner’s affair.

In the real world, if this happens to you, you rage impotently, break up with the cheating bastard or bitch, get on with life and hope to meet someone decent.

In the world of sport, all there is is impotent rage.

Because you know you’re not going to be able to break up with sport.

You’re just some sad bastard or bitch who thought sport loved them as much as they still love sport. Tragic.

So these particular cheats, like all of their ilk, are the epitome of contrition not because they cheated, but because they got caught.

If Smith and Bancroft were sincerely sorry they wouldn’t have lied at their press conference at Newlands on Saturday.

They said they had used sticking tape loaded with sand from the pitch to roughen the ball, and made sure to add that that tape was standard issue equipment. CA’s release on Wednesday says sandpaper was used.

So what?

So why do you have sandpaper in your kit when bats come pre-sanded or are covered by a protective layer that cannot be sanded?

So how do you, as a player in the middle of a Test, when the Australians say the plot was hatched, get your hands on sandpaper?

So who exactly acquired this sandpaper? Where? When?

So how long have you been doing this, and please tell us for real this time?

Tape is wet wipes in the cubbyhole of a married man’s car — kids are messy, you know.

Sandpaper is a condom, pristinely wrapped, secreted behind the sun visor of the same car.

But let’s calm down. Let’s be thankful everyone is getting out of this alive. All blood is unspilled. The police have been called, but only to throw a few morons out of the ground.

Three Australians are confirmed cheats — good luck telling anyone from somewhere else that there aren’t more where they came from — who have gone home to a world of shame, some of it deserved, some not.

They’re not that bad, are they?

Afraid they are seen to be, not least because the unnecessary unpleasantness Australia’s teams have visited on their opponents for decades has come home to roost. And those opponents aren’t going to let them forget it.

It’s barbaric and cruel, and deserved.

That’s what happens when you cheat, bastards.

Australia dwindling from Ashes to ashes

“Hopefully in the next Test we’ll get some way back towards being a gentleman’s game and we can have a beer.” – Ottis Gibson

TMG Digital

TELFORD VICE in Cape Town

NOTHING compares to the Ashes, or so cricketminded people in countries that aren’t England or Australia are told.

Intensity. Competitiveness. Drama. Needle. Nastiness. The Ashes, apparently, has it all, and more, in spades. Any other series is, somehow, not up that mark.

Ottis Gibson, South Africa’s coach, knows first-hand how that feels having served as England’s bowling coach in their successful Ashes campaigns in 2009 and 2015.

So, how does South Africa’s current rubber against Australia, which has lurched from one explosive episode to the next, compare with Test cricket’s original series?

“The Ashes is a lot of hype,” Gibson said on Tuesday in Cape Town, where South Africa won by 322 runs with a day to spare on Sunday to take a 2-1 series lead into the last Test at the Wanderers on Friday.

“In this series, I don’t know if it is because of what happened when South Africa were in Australia last time [in November 2016, when Faf du Plessis was convicted of ball-tampering], or whatever.

“But this one has had an edge to it that is different to the Ashes.

“At the end of the Ashes you sit down and have a drink together.

“Against India [who played three Tests in South Africa in January], it was a tough series but at the end of every game the guys came and had a drink.

“We haven’t had that opportunity yet with the Aussies, for whatever reason, because after every Test match there has been some sort of drama — someone had to go see the match ref, there was some conflict between the teams, stuff like that.

“Cricket is still, at the end of the day, a gentleman’s game. Hopefully in the next Test we’ll get some way back towards being a gentleman’s game and we can have a beer.”

Despite Gibson’s invitation it looks like that beer is going to stay, unopened and undrunk, in the fridge.

Cricket has taken a back seat to acrimony on both sides of the boundary.

David Warner, Quinton de Kock, Nathan Lyon, Kagiso Rabada, Mitchell Marsh, Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft have all been in trouble with the match referee for offences ranging from verbal abuse to shoulder-bumping to ball-tampering.

There’s no sign of things going quiet, what with Smith and Warner stood down as Australia’s captain and vice-captain at Newlands and coach Darren Lehmann reportedly close to resigning — all over the ball-tampering plot the visitors confessed to on Saturday after television cameras spotted Cameron Bancroft using sticking tape covered in sand to roughen the ball.

That has sparked furious condemnation from Australia, with prime minister Malcolm Turnbull climbing in and Cricket Australia (CA) launching an urgent investigation.

“I have been surprised at how big it has become, but at the the end of the day when you see such a deliberate act like we saw on TV then people will become very interested in it, especially the way it was planned,” Gibson said.

“Steve Smith said it was planned by a few of them and that makes it a bigger topic for people to talk about.

“CA is a hundred-year-old organisation, so to have something like this on their doorstep …

“CA’s also been the envy of the world in terms of winning World Cups and they’ve produced great teams and great players for a long time.

“So those great teams and great players of the past will feel like their good name has been tarnished.

“People have a right to be upset about that.”

South Africa have been convicted of ball-tampering three times since 2013, all before Gibson joined the camp. The practice wouldn’t be tolerated, he said.

“I would hope that it never happens under my watch. I’m not going to sit here and say we’re whiter than white or anything, but we’ll try and play the game within the rules of the game.

“We know where the rules are, and the imaginary line that we talked about for the whole series — we feel like we know where that is and we’ll try not to cross the line.”

For all that, Gibson remains what he called “a huge fan” of Australia’s attack.

“They’ve got three six-foot-six fast bowlers bowling 140 [kilometres an hour].

“So I’m still watching their bowlers and thinking, ‘That’s a very good bowling attack they’ve got’.”

The Wanderers crowd, easily the most aggressive in the country, might not take such an admiring view of the Aussies — particularly in a series that has been marred by poor spectator behaviour.

“Hopefully we have a big crowd because it’s an opportunity for us to win a series against Australia at home for the first time [since 1970],” Gibson said.

“So hopefully it will be a decent crowd, and by decent I mean respectful who will come and watch a good game of cricket, enjoy it and go home entertained.

“I think everyone at Newlands on Sunday went home entertained.”

That they did, relishing the dramatic and ongoing humiliation of an intensely competitive team who too often go past healthy needle and descend to nastiness.

It’s a team that is being reduced to ashes.