Ball-tampering was prevalent even before Sandpaper Gate, asserts Mickey Arthur

Australian cricket had moved forward from the ball-tampering scandal against South Africa in 2018. However, Cameron Bancroft's recent comments, where he hinted that the bowlers were also aware of the incident, sparked a controversy. Australian integrity team approached Cameron Bancroft where he denied his claims, Australian quartet of Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon released a statement to clarify that they were not aware of the scandal. A lot of things unfolded in the week gone by.

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The current Sri Lanka coach Mickey Arthur believes that the 'Sandpaper Gate' saga was not the first such instance as ball-tampering has been prevalent in cricket for long. He claimed that it will be 'naive' to think that players didn't use sweeteners and gums to maintain the ball before.

“You’d be naive to say otherwise. You’d be naive to think teams hadn’t tried some sweets to sweeten up your saliva to give the ball a buff - teams were doing that. I think everybody’s just a little bit on edge. I do think people are too scared to try anything. The ball is being checked numerous times in any game. Every couple of overs the ball goes to the umpire and he has a look at it," Mickey Arthur told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Hair gel, sweets, mint, lip balm, bottle caps and cough lozenge are some of the things used in the past to maintain the ball. Bancroft was not the first person to be involved in ball-tampering. Several big names including, Sachin Tendulkar, James Anderson, Waqar Younis, Shahid Afridi have been accused of tampering with the ball.

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