Trescothick reveals how England masterminded a ball tampering ploy

Ball tampering has always been an intriguing issue in the world of cricket. Many teams have been accused of tampering with the cricket ball and then getting away with it due to the vagueness of the cricket laws.

Let's have a look at one such incident that took place in the 2005 Ashes, which was revealed by the former English opener Marcus Trescothick in his autobiography, Coming Back to Me: The Autobiography of Marcus Trescothick.

"By now, I was firmly established as the man in charge of looking after the ball when we were fielding. It was my job to keep the shine on the new ball for as long as possible with a bit of spit and a lot of polish." Writes the Southpaw.

He revealed how they arrived at a particular mint that made saliva which helped the ball swing more for longer durations.

"Through trial and error, I finally settled on the best type of spit for the task at hand. It had been common knowledge in county cricket for some time that certain sweets produced saliva which when applied to the ball for cleaning purposes enabled it to keep its shine for longer and therefore its swing." Writes Marcus in his book.

He also describes how this discovery happened by pure accident.

"While at Warwickshire, Dermot Reeve noticed that his bowlers somehow had the ability to keep the ball swinging far longer than any team they faced. The problem was no one knew why. He realized the player in charge of polishing and keeping the ball clean was his top-order batsman Asif Din and what he did to keep his concentration levels up was chewing extra strong mints."

Trescothick says it took a while for the word to get around, but once it did, the sales of sweets near the county grounds of England went through the roof.

"I tried Asif's confection of choice but couldn't get on with them. Too dry. So I had a go at Murray Mints and found they worked a treat. The trouble was, even allowing for trying to keep one going as long as possible. I still used to get through about 15 a day, and the taste soon palled.", so admits Trescothick in his autobiography.

Marcus also mentions the involvement of the staff in this ploy.

"Once Phil Neale came on board as our operations manager, it was one of his jobs to make sure the dressing-room was fully stocked at all times."

The ruse didn't work in Australia, though, as the mint wasn't as effective on Kookaburra balls.

"We even tried taking them on tour a couple of times until we realized that they didn¹t work as well on the Kookaburra balls used overseas as the Dukes we used back home."

Trescothick also reveals an incident where their gambit was almost caught.

"On the first day of the match (of 2005 Ashes) in Leeds, an unfortunate fielding incident almost gave the game away to the Aussies for the first time, as I dived to gather the ball at square leg, landed on my side and a shower of Murray Mints spewed out of my trouser pocket all over the grass right in front of the umpire."

"Fortunately, neither he nor the two batsmen seemed to take much notice as I scrambled around on all fours trying desperately to gather in the sweets before they started asking awkward questions."

The problem with ICC's ball tampering laws is that they can punish only the most obvious, clear and blatant types of ball tampering, like Shahid Afridi biting the ball or Cameron Bancroft using sandpaper.

Using mints to taint spit for shining a cricket ball is blatantly illegal. Under Law 41, subsection 3 of the Laws of Cricket, the ball may be polished without the use of an artificial substance, may be dried with a towel if it is wet, and have mud removed from it under supervision; all other actions which alter the condition of the ball are illegal.