SA vs AUS 3rd Test at Cape Town: The ghosts of Sandpapergate make Newlands the apt venue for the series decider originally appeared on Cricket News. Add Cricket News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Australia and South Africa meet at Newlands on October 27 with the series locked at 1-1.
- It is Australia's first Test at the ground since the 2018 ball-tampering scandal.
- Steve Smith, captain that week, faces a fitness test on a neck problem.
What happened at Newlands in March 2018: The infamous 'Sandpaper' scandal
Australia were chasing reverse swing on the third afternoon with South Africa batting a second time, and Cameron Bancroft had a piece of yellow sandpaper in his pocket. He used it to scuff one side of the ball, and the cameras found him within minutes. What he did next mattered more than the act itself.
Catching sight of himself on the big screen, Bancroft pushed the sandpaper down the front of his trousers, then produced a sunglasses pouch when the umpires came over to ask what he had been using. Smith and Bancroft admitted at the close of play that the plan had been deliberate, with Smith referring vaguely to a leadership group that had settled on it.
By the next morning both he and David Warner had been stood down, and Tim Paine led a side that went on to lose the Test. Cricket Australia blamed Warner, who devised the plan and showed Bancroft how to carry it out, while Smith knew and did nothing to stop it. The bans ran to twelve months for the two senior men and nine for Bancroft.
The ICC, judging only the tampering, gave Smith a one-match suspension and Bancroft three demerit points. That gap tells you where the real offence was thought to lie.
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Only Smith remains of the three, with Warner retired and Bancroft long gone. Even Smith is not certain to play, as he still has to pass a fitness test for the neck stiffness that bothered him through Gqeberha.
Whoever takes the field, the scrutiny is unavoidable. Any reverse swing Australian bowlers find at Newlands this week will be watched by broadcasters who know exactly which camera angles turned a Test match into a scandal, and no other touring side would draw that sort of attention.
What makes the timing worse is that Australia arrived fragile rather than imperious, having been bowled out for 99 and made to follow on last week. Nic Maddinson has been sent home after two ducks in four innings, and Marnus Labuschagne carries scores of 37, 37, 14 and 39 into a match he may not survive.
South Africa have noticed all of it. Simon Harmer said after Gqeberha that his side had realised Australia's batters were human and could be put under pressure, while Ryan Rickelton has admitted openly that they intend to get into Labuschagne's head.
Marco Jansen spent part of the last Test needling him in Afrikaans, the two of them having grown up in the same Northwest town. That is the sort of thing a side does when it believes it has found a weakness, not when it is hoping for one.
A perfect venue for an evenly poised series-decider
Nothing in the first two Tests tells you how this one will go. Australia won in Durban by 214 runs and looked a class apart, while South Africa won by an innings in Gqeberha after losing the best part of two days to rain, looking the same.
South Africa's case rests on the men who did it last time. Temba Bavuma made 179 at St George's Park, Jansen took five wickets and then hit 85, and Kagiso Rabada waits at the other end, with the reigning World Test Championship holders making one change in Gerald Coetzee for the injured Anrich Nortje.
Australia have more bowling options than they know what to do with. Pat Cummins described the problem after the second Test as five match-winners competing for four slots. The batting that was meant to give those bowlers something to defend produced just one innings of substance in the whole of the last match: Travis Head's 121.
Newlands will not settle the argument early either, with a seam in the pitch on the first morning and pace in it as the match wears on. The weather under Table Mountain can take a session away without warning.
There is every chance the week turns out to be about nothing more than cricket, with Rabada and Cummins bowling well and the better batting side taking the series, which is certainly how the players would prefer it. But the sport has a long memory, and it has put Australia back at Newlands with a series to win and the cameras pointed at the same square of ground they were in 2018.
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