Despite the appeal from the Australian Cricketers’ Association of reconsidering the bans of David Warner, Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft after a comprehensive review, Cricket Australia (CA) clarified that the original verdict of imposing bans on the players in any given situation. While CA fully accepts responsibility for what led to the ball-tampering fiasco, they are no mood of lifting the punishments given to the trio.
Smith and Warner have been given a ban up to a year, which means they will be eligible to play all forms of cricket from April 2019. Cameron Bancroft, who carried out the activity, will be eligible from January 2019. Talking about the same, David Peever, who is Cricket Australia’s chairman as quoted by ESPN Cricinfo said, “The sanctions were carried out and imposed by the board after a very full and thoughtful process. So the sanctions stand.”
ALSO READ: Independent ball-tampering scandal review slams Cricket Australia
As per the reports of Fox Sports Australia, the review reports stated, “There were frequent comments noting the immense pressure on players always to win and the unacceptability of anything less than in all forms of the game.” It implicates that this is what lead the players to use unfair means in order to win the game.
In order to investigate the Newlands scandal, CA conducted an in-depth review and one of the points in the review which was found out was the men’s cricket team had a mindset of “win at all costs”. As per the review, another major finding was that there were players who were dissatisfied with Cricket Australia’s decision making and style. There were multiple occurrences of disrespect than ran through CA. Director Simon Longstaff stated in the report.
The report proposes 42 recommendations in order to repair the state of Australian cricket. In the current scenario, a majority of them have been accepted with seven under consideration and one not accepted at this stage.