Sandpapergate established who planned the crime, who carried it out and who failed to stop it. It never satisfactorily answered a more uncomfortable question: what did Australia’s bowlers know?

I don’t want to tell you what happened at Newlands.

You know.

Cameron Bancroft. Yellow sandpaper. David Warner. Steve Smith. Television cameras. Trousers. Press conferences. Tears at airports. Bans.

Australian cricket behaving for several weeks as though somebody had taken a tin of Dulux to the Southern Cross.

We’ve done that story.

The question that interests me is sitting immediately beside it.

Mitchell Starc didn’t know.

Josh Hazlewood didn’t know.

Pat Cummins didn’t know.

Nathan Lyon didn’t know.

That is their position. It has been consistent and categorical.

In 2021, the four bowlers issued a joint statement saying they did not know a foreign substance had been taken onto the field to alter the ball until the images appeared on the big screen at Newlands.

This article does not allege that Australia’s bowlers planned Sandpapergate, instructed Bancroft, saw the sandpaper or knowingly participated in the plot.

We cannot establish any of those things.

My question is narrower. And, I think, harder.

Can complete ignorance really be reconciled with how an elite Test bowling attack manages a cricket ball?

Because the ball wasn’t incidental to these men.

The ball was their business.

A Fast Bowler Knows His Ball

To a spectator, a cricket ball is equipment.

To a Test fast bowler, it is closer to livestock.

He knows the seam. The lacquer. The shine. The rough side. The moisture.

How old it is. Whether it has softened. Whether conventional swing is disappearing. Whether reverse swing is beginning. Whether somebody has thrown it into the wrong patch of grass. And importantly, which side everyone is supposed to protect.

Ball management is not some secret meeting held behind the sightscreen.

Watch any professional fielding side trying to manufacture reverse swing.

One side is polished obsessively. Fielders are careful about how they handle it. The ball gets passed to particular players. Bowlers rub it on their trousers. Conversations happen constantly about what it is doing.

Anyone who has played enough cricket has seen a bowler get shitty with a teammate for handling the ball badly.

Don’t rub sweat everywhere. Don’t throw it unnecessarily into the rough.

Keep that side dry. Polish this side. Get it back here.

The reason is obvious.

Change the condition of the ball and you change what the bowler can do with it. Which makes the central proposition of Newlands peculiar.

The Australians whose professional output depended most directly on the condition of that ball were supposedly also completely outside the information loop about an attempt to change it for their benefit.

Possible? Absolutely.

But we’re going to need to examine how possible.

South Africa Was Already Watching

This is where the story becomes more uncomfortable.

South Africa’s suspicions did not begin when Bancroft appeared on television with something yellow in his hand. They had started earlier in the series.

In the first Test at Durban, Mitchell Starc took nine wickets. More striking than the wickets was what the old ball was doing.

Years later, Faf du Plessis described Australia’s reverse swing in that Test as extraordinary. South Africa’s ball reversed too, he wrote, but not nearly as much as Australia’s. Starc was getting a badly deteriorated ball to move dramatically.

Now stop there. That is not evidence of cheating.

Reverse swing is legal. Durban’s abrasive conditions could accelerate natural deterioration. Starc is one of the finest reverse-swing bowlers of his generation.

South Africa themselves understood the dark arts of ball management rather well. Du Plessis had previously been sanctioned for his own ball-tampering offence and explicitly acknowledged that he wasn’t making these observations from some great moral height.

But South Africa noticed a difference.

Enough of one that they became suspicious about how Australia was preparing the ball.

By the second Test at Port Elizabeth, they were watching Australia’s fielders through binoculars.

Not metaphorically. Actual binoculars.

Du Plessis later wrote that the South African dressing room resembled a birdwatching hide as they tracked the ball and noticed how frequently it was going to David Warner.

Think about that sequence.

Durban: Australia’s ball reverses substantially more, in South Africa’s assessment.

Port Elizabeth: South Africa becomes suspicious enough to monitor Australia’s ball management through binoculars.

Cape Town: Bancroft is caught using sandpaper.

Again, that sequence does not establish that illegal tampering occurred in Durban or Port Elizabeth.

We do not have evidence to make that claim.

But it destroys any suggestion that Newlands occurred in a vacuum.

The condition of Australia’s ball was already a subject of interest to the opposition.

And that brings us back to the bowlers.

The Men Using the Result

Nobody takes sandpaper onto a cricket field because roughening leather is an enjoyable hobby.

The objective is aerodynamic.

One side deteriorates. The other is maintained.

The imbalance helps create reverse swing.

And who ultimately uses that altered aerodynamic state?

The bowlers.

Immediately before the Newlands Test began on 22 March 2018, Australia’s four frontline bowlers had:

• Nathan Lyon — 297 Test wickets
• Mitchell Starc — 181 Test wickets
• Josh Hazlewood — 145 Test wickets
• Pat Cummins — 50 Test wickets

That is 673 Test wickets between them before a ball was bowled at Newlands.

This was not some callow attack learning international cricket on the fly.

This doesn’t mean they must therefore have known. But it matters when assessing plausibility.

Australia’s attack wasn’t vaguely aware of reverse swing. Producing it was part of their craft.

Starc was one of its finest practitioners. Hazlewood understood it. Cummins understood it.

Lyon’s role mattered too because the way a spinner handled and delivered the ball could affect its condition.

This was an elite bowling unit operating at the microscopic end of ball management.

The proposition therefore isn’t:

Could a bowler fail to see Bancroft holding a piece of sandpaper?

Of course he could.

The proposition is:

Could an entire elite bowling attack remain unaware that something abnormal was being done to the object they were collectively monitoring in pursuit of reverse swing?

That is a different question.

The Bowlers Have a Proper Defence

And it deserves to be taken seriously.

Bancroft was caught quickly.

After the television footage appeared, umpires Nigel Llong and Richard Illingworth inspected the ball.

They did not replace it.

The bowlers themselves later pointed to precisely this fact: two experienced Test umpires could inspect the ball after the incident and find no obvious damage requiring replacement.

That is strong evidence against the simplistic argument that:

“Starc touched the ball, therefore Starc must have known.”

No.

If the umpires couldn’t identify meaningful damage, a bowler receiving the ball does not automatically become a human forensic laboratory.

There’s another important distinction.

Knowing your teammates are working on the ball is not the same as knowing somebody has brought sandpaper onto the field.

Legal maintenance happens every delivery.

A bowler might see Warner or Bancroft obsessively polishing or handling the ball and regard it as completely ordinary.

So yes, there is a coherent innocent explanation:

Warner and Bancroft devise something idiotic. Smith becomes aware and fails to stop it.

Bancroft begins carrying it out. Television catches him before substantial damage occurs.

The bowlers know nothing about the specific illegal method. That is entirely possible.

And without evidence, we cannot replace it with accusation.

But then Cameron Bancroft spoke.

“Probably Self-Explanatory”

In 2021, Bancroft was asked whether Australia’s bowlers knew what was happening.

He could have said no. He didn’t.

He said that what he had done obviously benefited the bowlers and that the awareness around it was “probably self-explanatory.”

Pressed again specifically about whether the bowlers knew, he again described it as essentially self-explanatory.

That’s a fascinating answer. It is also not proof.

Bancroft named nobody. He did not explain what “awareness” meant.

Did he mean awareness of sandpaper? Awareness that the ball was being manipulated?

Awareness that the team was aggressively working one side?

Those are radically different propositions.

And when Cricket Australia’s integrity unit contacted Bancroft after those comments, he said he had no new information to provide.

So we cannot turn his hesitation into a confession on behalf of four other men.

But we shouldn’t pretend he said nothing either.

The bloke who actually held the sandpaper was asked whether the bowlers knew.

His answer was not: Absolutely not.

It was: “Probably self-explanatory.”

That deserves to remain in the file.

The Investigation Is Why This Question Survived

And this, ultimately, is why the question refuses to die.

Cricket Australia moved quickly. Its investigation found that Warner developed the plan and instructed Bancroft; Bancroft carried it out; Smith knew and failed to stop it.

The punishments were enormous: 12 months for Warner and Smith, nine for Bancroft. Australian cricket changed with them.

But the investigation into who knew what has never inspired quite the same confidence as the sanctions that followed it.

Subsequent reporting established that not every player and relevant member of the touring party was interviewed during the original investigation.

That matters.

It does not prove a cover-up. It does not prove the bowlers knew.

But if the conclusion is that knowledge of one of Australian cricket’s greatest integrity scandals was confined to three men, interviewing everyone capable of possessing that knowledge would seem a fairly basic requirement.

Instead, the official perimeter was remarkably neat.

Warner conceived it. Bancroft did it. Smith knew.

And the four men whose work depended most directly on the condition of the ball knew nothing of the illegal intervention.

That is entirely possible. Small conspiracies happen. Stupid ideas can belong to two people. The umpires found no obvious damage to the ball, which gives the bowlers’ defence genuine weight.

But there is another side to the ledger.

Australia were pursuing reverse swing. South Africa believed Australia were achieving substantially more of it than they were and became suspicious enough to watch Australia’s ball management through binoculars. Then Bancroft was caught using an illegal abrasive specifically intended to alter the ball.

David Saker, Australia’s bowling coach, later said there were “a lot of people to blame”, argued the episode could have been stopped, and called for Cricket Australia’s full report to be released. He denied knowing about the sandpaper plan himself.

Then, in 2021, Bancroft was asked whether the bowlers knew what was happening.

His answer, “probably self-explanatory”– reopened a door Cricket Australia thought it had closed. He subsequently told CA he had no new information.

None of this proves Starc, Hazlewood, Cummins or Lyon knew.

But taken together, it makes complete ignorance something worth interrogating rather than simply accepting.

That distinction is the whole article.

Ask Them About the Ball

There is one question I would still like answered.

Not:

Did you know Cameron Bancroft had sandpaper?

We have had that answer.

Ask each bowler instead:

Before the footage appeared, what did you believe was being done to the ball to help Australia generate reverse swing?

Who maintained the shiny side? What instructions were given to fielders? What did they understand Bancroft’s role to be? Did the amount of reverse swing surprise them? Did anyone discuss why Australia appeared to be getting more of it than South Africa?

These aren’t gotcha questions.

They’re cricket questions.

And mundane answers might actually strengthen the bowlers’ defence.

Because “we didn’t know about the sandpaper” answers whether they knew about the method.

It does not completely answer what they understood about the management of the ball.

The Ball Was Their Business

So where does the evidence leave us?

The established facts are straightforward. Warner devised the Newlands plan. Bancroft used the sandpaper. Smith knew enough to fail to stop it. Starc, Hazlewood, Cummins and Lyon have categorically denied knowing a foreign substance was being used, and no public evidence has emerged proving those denials false.

That matters. So does the other evidence.

South Africa noticed Australia’s reverse swing and started watching. Bancroft later gave an answer that raised more questions than it settled. And Cricket Australia’s investigation did not interview everyone who might have helped establish the full perimeter of awareness.

Complete ignorance remains possible. I just don’t find it entirely persuasive.

That is as far as the evidence allows us to go.

Anything stronger becomes accusation masquerading as analysis.

So I won’t write that the Australian bowlers knew.

I can’t prove that. Nobody publicly can.

But nor should reasonable scrutiny end where proof runs out.

Batsmen obsess over their bats. Keepers obsess over their gloves.

Fast bowlers obsess over the cricket ball.

Its seam. Its shine. Its moisture. Its rough side. Its age. Its movement.

For hundreds of deliveries, they ask that piece of leather to make their living for them.

And these were hardly apprentices. Australia entered Newlands with 673 Test wickets in its four-man attack: Nathan Lyon had 297, Mitchell Starc 181, Josh Hazlewood 145 and Pat Cummins 50. Three of them had 623 wickets between them before Cummins, the junior member, was even counted.

These were senior international bowlers operating in a system where tiny changes to the condition of a cricket ball could change a Test match.

At Newlands, somebody took sandpaper to that ball.

The official account asks us to believe the men who understood it better than almost anyone on the ground knew nothing about the illegal attempt to change it.

Maybe they didn’t.

But eight years later, that remains an answer.

It has never quite become an explanation.