When the Australian cricket team witnessed the ball-tampering scandal at Newlands during the third Test match against South Africa, the spirit of the Aussies was questioned with reports of infighting becoming a regular feature. However, Australian pacer Mitchell Starc who was part of Test and took a wicket in each of the innings has broken the silence on the matter and made it clear that he was angry about the comments his teammates had made after the game.
Starc isn’t very happy with the comments made during the first press conference where former skipper Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft were present. He slammed the “the group who decided to go into a press conference” for “not telling the whole truth” that “affected other reputations”.
Both Smith and Bancroft attended the press-conference after they were caught by TV cameras in playing their part in the ball-tampering saga. During the media interaction, Smith said that the decision to do what they did to the ball was made by “leadership group”.
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During a public forum in Sydney, Starc said, “Going back to what Sue (corporate adviser Sue Cato) said before about being upfront and tackling a problem head-on, that’s something the group who decided to go into a press conference didn’t really think about. They obviously didn’t see how big the reaction was going to be at that time and then went down the path of not telling the whole truth and then I guess involving another group, which ruined — well, not ruined — but affected other reputations.”
The comments lead to the speculations like the senior Australian bowlers like Starc, Josh Hazlewood, and Nathan Lyon was part of “leadership group” that Smith spoke of.
However, Starc, like Hazlewood denied any knowledge of the plot. After the incident, Steve Smith and David Warner stepped down from their leadership roles and they were consequently for the period of 12 months from international and domestic cricket by Cricket Australia, while Cameron Bancroft was given a nine-month sentence.
