Lack of experienced players in the Australian side led to Sandpaper Gate fiasco, believes Ricky Ponting

The trio of Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft garnered much attention when they were involved in the infamous ball-tampering scandal during third Test match against South Africa in Cape Town in 2018. Post that, the troika was handed with a ban from Cricket Australia for their actions against the sportsmanship.

The instance took place during the third Test in Cape Town when a television camera caught Cameron Bancroft rubbing one side of the ball with sandpaper. So, that the bowlers can get ample of swing during the match. In sports like cricket, no player is allowed to change or hamper the condition of the ball. And, if a player does that, then the player has to face the consequences for tampering the ball and the same happened after that 3rd Test.

Ricky Ponting opens up on the Sandpaper Gate fiasco

Later on, it was revealed that David Warner and Steve Smith also had an involvement in the same. At that time, Smith was the skipper of the team and Warner was his deputy due to which they were handed with a year-long suspension from Cricket Australia.

Now, Ricky Ponting has opened up over that scandal and said the incident were not many people in the dressing room to say no to them due to which the things went out of control. If there was any senior player then, that might not have happened according to Ponting. As per him, a big void was left in the team after the departure of the experienced players that led to such a situation.

“I was a bit worried that with a lot of the experience going out of our team at the same time, that there would be a bit of a void left with experienced players to be able to say ‘no’ basically. If I look at where things got at Cape Town I just don’t think there were enough people around that team to say ‘no’ to some of those guys.

Things got completely out of control. That’s very much an outsider’s view on it. I had nothing to do with the team really until the last couple of years around some Twenty20 cricket and the World Cup last year,” Ricky Ponting said during the during a fund-raising dinner for the Chappell Foundation at the SCG as quoted by ESPNcricinfo.

Watch: Irfan Pathan’s interview post his retirement