Bancroft’s small comment only became so big because there is still little clarity on Cape Town and the suspicion preceding it
It was telling that it took so little. A few vague words, a verbal half-shuffle that wasn’t evasive enough, and the whole story lit up like bonfire night. As part of a wider-ranging interview with the Guardian, Australian batter Cameron Bancroft called it “self-explanatory” that tampering with a cricket ball benefits bowlers, in the context of him being caught with sandpaper during a 2018 Test match.
The comments were received as newly damning of his former teammates, even though each implication has been sitting in the open since that match in Cape Town. There was metaphorising about skeletons emerging from cupboards and ghosts returning to haunt. But skeletons or ghosts require something to be dead first, and Australia’s cricket establishment never laid this story to rest.
