After exiting from his 17-year long journey as Cricket Australia (CA) chief on Thursday, James Sutherland admitted that his initial learning on the ball-tampering scandal in this year’s Cape Town Test was a “serious WTF moment” and he feels regret for that.
In this March, during the Cape Town Test between South Africa and Australia, the Australian cricketer Cameron Bancroft was caught in on-field cameras to trying to alter the ball condition by using yellow sandpaper. Later, it was revealed that the vice-captain David Warner was the mastermind of this action while the skipper Steven Smith was also aware of this incident.
Sutherland was watching that game at his home in Melbourne but missed that controversial on-field incident as well as the important press conference at the end of that day, where Smith and others spoke out about that incident.
Recently, Sutherland told ESPNcricinfo on that incident, “At a guess it would’ve been about midnight I suppose (that he turned off the TV) but, yeah, I wish I was watching, absolutely.
“It was a serious WTF moment there. I’d like to think that my judgement and possibly influence would have meant that the media conference would have gone slightly differently.
“As we know, that was part of the penalty and the severity of the penalty was to some extent related or at least was consequential in terms of how that was handled — not telling the truth, or not telling the whole truth.”
After the investigation, CA suspended Smith and Warner for one-year each and Bancroft for nine months.
From the beginning of that four-match Test series, the on-field performances were constantly overshadowed with several controversial incidents. Starting from Australians aggressive sledging to Warner-Quinton de Kock aggressive chat fight at the staircase, or continuous spectators and administrators abusing to Australian players (especially on David Warner), everything hit in that series before the biggest ball-tampering controversy.
Sutherland admitted that those were the warning signs but they didn’t care much on those incidents.
Sutherland said on this, “I was heartbroken by the events that happened and I think that in some ways I totally understand that in the heat of battle things can boil over and go awry and there can be regrettable incidents.
“Part of the extent of my disappointment around Cape Town is heightened by what happened earlier in the series, and my feeling that there were warning signals.
“There were lots of other things going on, and some disgraceful behaviour during the Port Elizabeth Test, provocation by opposition fans but also administrators from the opposition team.”
