Former Australian cricket captain Tim Paine alleges South Africa ALSO engaged in ball tampering

Tim Paine has sensationally accused South Africa of tampering with the ball in the Test match immediately after Australian cricket was rocked by the Sandpapergate scandal, claiming the act was covered up by match broadcasters.

Paine made the explosive claims in his autobiography The Paid Price, with the former Test captain becoming the first player to lift the lid on the 2018 Cape Town Test in an all-encompassing book.

The 37-year-old has denied any suggestion of a team meeting surrounding Cameron Bancroft’s plan to use sandpaper on the ball during the third Test of the series against South Africa.

And he says he was stunned and his heart sank when replays showed Bancroft hiding the sandpaper in his pants before being addressed by umpires.

“I thought ‘what the f**k,'” Paine wrote. “A sense of dread came over all of us.”

In a lengthy chapter on the 2018 tour, Paine went out of his way to point out that ball tampering was common in cricket and it was the sport’s dirty secret.

Paine’s allegations come just days after South African cricketer Faf du Plessis suggested the bans handed out to Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft were excessive.

But he admitted that using sandpaper was “next level” and “embarrassing” with traditional tampering, usually through means such as throwing the ball into the ground.

Regardless, he says he was furious when he saw South Africa reportedly tearing the seam of the ball apart in the next Test.

“I saw it happen in the fourth Test of that series,” Paine wrote.

‘Think about it. After everything that had happened in Cape Town, after all the headlines and bans and so on.

“I was at the bowler’s end in the next Test when halfway through a shot appeared on the screen from a South African player who had a huge crack in the ball.

“The television director, who had played an active role in capturing Cam (Bancroft), immediately took the shot off the screen.

“We went to the umpires about it, which may have seemed a little bad, but we were butchered and convinced they had done it from the first Test.

‘But the images have been lost. As it would be.’

In now infamous scenes, Cameron Bancroft was caught on camera applying sandpaper to the ball in Cape Town

In his autobiography, Paine went to great lengths to point out that tampering with the ball was common in cricket and it was the sport’s dirty secret.

Paine said it felt like Australia was being “provoked” throughout the series amid massive abuse of player families with David Warner as a particular target.

The wicketkeeper also claimed that Warner had every right to be upset after he thought Quinton de Kock had made a comment about his wife Candice before the infamous kicking showdown in Kingsmead.

“I was the one who kept them apart and I know how it unfolded,” Paine said.

Paine has regularly called for Warner’s lifetime leadership ban to be lifted as Cricket Australia seized an opportunity to punish him after the previous year’s wage talks.

And he admitted he felt the side had dropped the opener before the Cape Town debacle.

“I don’t know how (Warner) kept his cool in those situations and on reflection I feel like the team has let him down by not offering him more support,” Paine wrote.

“I see now that he was masking a lot of pain and we should have known that.”

Paine also stated in his book that he felt that the entire Australian team should have taken joint responsibility for the tampering with the ball – and felt it was unfair David Warner, Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft had permanently tarnished their careers and reputations.

“I still feel like Steve, Dave and Cam have had a hard time, and so has Boof (coach, Darren Lehmann), but I’ve wondered if there was a point where we could have said something different or something different.” could have done,” Paine wrote.

“Everyone was a part of it to some degree – would it have worked out better for those three players if we’d had it as a team? I think so.’