Former captain of the England team Alastair Cook has brought to light an incident in which Australian opener David Warner disclosed to him how he used the strapping on his hand to tamper the ball. The tampering of the ball ensured that the ball gets deteriorated quickly and the bowlers gain an undue advantage of reverse swing.
Notably, Warner was suspended from International Cricket for a similar incident. He was part of the group which altered the ball with the help of sandpaper during a Test match against South Africa in March 2018. The other players included in the sandpaper gate incident were Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft.
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“David Warner, a couple of beers into his celebration, mentioned that he used substances attached to the strapping on his hand to accelerate the deterioration of the ball during a first-class match. I looked at Steve Smith who shot a glance that said: ‘Ooh, you shouldn’t have said that’,” Alastair Cook was quoted as saying by ‘The Guardian’.
“Stuart Broad sums it up pretty well and says they got the ball to reverse swing in that Ashes. Why change what you’ve been doing? Why suddenly use sandpaper? People know what was going on. But it’s been the best thing for Australian cricket because they realised it wasn’t acceptable. The win-at-all-costs culture they created isn’t what the Australian public needed or wanted. They’d gone too far,” Cook added.
Cook retired from Test match cricket after India’s tour of England in 2018.
