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 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 a tell-all book.

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

And he says he was stunned and his heart sank as replays showed Bancroft hiding the sandpaper in his pants before the referees spoke to him.

“I was thinking ‘what the fuck’,” Paine wrote. “A feeling of dread came over us all.”

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

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

But he acknowledged the use of sandpaper was “next level” and “shameful”, with traditional tampering usually by means such as throwing the ball into the ground.

Either way, he says he became furious when he spotted South Africa allegedly splitting the seam of the ball in the next Test.

“I saw it happen in the fourth test of this series,” Paine wrote.

‘Think about that. After all that happened in Cape Town, after all the headlines and bans and carry on.

“I was standing on the bowlers side during the next test when a shot appeared on the screen from a South African player halfway through with a huge crack to the ball.

“The television director, who had played an active role in Cam’s (Bancroft) capture, immediately removed the shot from the screen.

“We went to the referees about it, which might sound a bit poor, but we had been downcast and were confident they were up to it from the first test.

“But the images got lost. As he would.

In now infamous scenes, Cameron Bancroft was filmed applying sandpaper to the balloon in Cape Town

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

Paine said he felt Australia were “provoked” throughout the series amid mob abuse against players’ families with David Warner as a particular target.

The wicketkeeper also claimed Warner had every right to be upset after he thought Quinton de Kock had made a comment about his wife Candice ahead of the infamous confrontation on the stairs at Kingsmead.

“I was the one who held them off and I know how it went,” Paine said.

Paine has repeatedly called for Warner’s lifetime managerial ban to be lifted, saying Cricket Australia took the opportunity to punish him after wage negotiations the previous year.

And he admitted he felt like the team had let the opener down before the Cape Town debacle.

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

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

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

“I still feel like Steve, Dave and Cam took the brunt of it, and Boof (coach, Darren Lehmann) too, but I wondered if there was a time when we could have said something or do something different,” Paine wrote.

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