David Saker, bowling coach in Cape Town 2018 Test, responds to Bancroft's 'self explanatory' call

The Newlands Test saga seems to have been opened up once again by the comment made by Cameron Bancroft. Bancroft was at the heart of the crisis that saw himself along with Steve Smith and David Warner face suspension from playing the game and representing Australia at the world stage.

Responding to the development of the matter, the then bowling coach of Australia, David Saker has said that everyone including him and the head coach Darren Lehman could well be blamed for the loss of credibility of the Australian team.

He went on to say that these finger pointing towards one another can go on and for years without any purpose other than crisis lingering over players and individuals involved.

“Obviously a lot of things went wrong at that time. The finger-pointing is going to go on and on and on. There was a lot of people to blame. It could have been me to blame, it could have been someone else. It could have been stopped and it wasn’t, which is unfortunate,” Saker told to The Age.

Pointing to Bancroft for his latest comments with regards to fast bowlers being aware of what was happening at the ground, Saker said that maybe the right-handed opener was trying to get an easy closure for himself by revealing all he knew about.

“Cameron’s a very nice guy. He’s just doing it to get something off his chest...He’s not going to be the last. You could point your finger at me, you could point your finger at Boof (Darren Lehmann), could you point it at other people, of course, you could. The disappointing thing is it’s never going to go away. Regardless of what’s said. We all know that we made a monumental mistake. The gravity wasn’t as plain until it all came out,” Saker added.

Notably, Cameron Bancroft’s interview with The Guardian where he concluded that it was ‘self-explanatory’ that bowlers must have known if the ball was being tampered with.

Following Bancroft’s interview, Cricket Australia said that the governing body that led a ‘detailed and comprehensive investigation of the Cape Town Test' is still open to hearing new information or evidence from anyone including Bancroft himself.

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