Former England skipper Michael Vaughan hits at Cricket Australia (CA) for making a ‘piecemeal investigation’ of the infamous sandpaper gate of 2018. Vaughan feels the board had left several questions unanswered but this will not do them any good and can keep biting them in future.

The focus of the whole cricketing fraternity moved towards CA when the Australian Test side was caught doing ball-tampering during the Cape Town Test in 2018. The board handed hefty suspensions to Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft for their involvement in this whole episode.

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This issue caught fire again after Bancroft’s interview with The Guardian, where he revealed that it’s ‘self-explanatory’ whether bowlers were aware that the ball is being prepared for them.

Vaughan has said it’s hard to believe that only three people were aware of the whole episode before breaking in front of the world.

“Not many former professionals I have spoken to believe something like that would be confined to just three people. There might be some in a dressing room who may not like it and disagree with a course of action, but say nothing because they do not want to go against the captain. I can see how that happens,” Vaughan wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald.

“Ultimately, this shows what happens if you do a piecemeal investigation and leave questions unanswered. It will keep biting you on the backside and does not do anyone any good.”

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Former Australian skipper Michael Clarke also feels it won’t be ‘surprising’ if the bowlers were aware of the incident. He criticized CA for ‘sweeping it under the carpet’.

The Australian bowling quartet of Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon issued a joint statement on sandpaper gate to deny any prior knowledge of it and requested a stop to ‘rumour-mongering and innuendo’.

Vaughan believes it was hard for CA to ban more players. “Cricket Australia probably felt it looked into it properly and hoped everyone would move on. A lot of damage was done to Australian cricket’s reputation and to those involved,” he wrote.

“I felt at the time the bans were too severe, and I can see why Cricket Australia would not want to go back over it. You cannot ban players retrospectively.”