T20 World Cup 2022: Tim Paine accuses South Africa of ball tampering

South African cricket team [Source: Associated Press]

Former Australian skipper Tim Paine has accused South Africa of ball-tampering in his newly released biography. Before the infamous 'Sandgate' incident at Cape Town where stadium cameras caught Australian players hiding a sandpaper. Which followed the suspension of elite players and a lifetime captaincy ban for David Warner. 

What Paine wrote 

Paine claimed that the Proteas picked at the seam in the Test preceding the Cape Town incident. He claimed that the South African broadcasters pulled the footage off the screen that caught the South African ball tampering. 

"I saw it happen in the fourth Test of that series, they [South African broadcasters] immediately pulled the shot off the screen"

"Think about that. After everything that had happened in Cape Town, after all the headlines and bans and carry on.I was standing at the bowlers' end in the next Test when a shot came up on the screen of a South African player at mid-off having a huge crack at the ball."

"The television director, who had played an active role in catching out Cam (Bancroft), immediately pulled the shot off the screen. We went to the umpires about it, which might seem a bit poor, but we'd been slaughtered and were convinced they'd been up to it since the first Test. But the footage got lost. As it would."

Paine suggested that ball-tampering is a regular in cricket but the sandpaper incident was 'next-level' and extremely 'shameful'. 

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