Sandpapergate tops your list. Of all the moments Test cricket would rather forget, it was the yellow strip of sandpaper in Cameron Bancroft’s pocket at Newlands in March 2018 — caught by a Supersport camera, then stuffed down the front of his trousers on live television — that BBC Sport readers ranked as the sport’s biggest scandal.
It is a revealing choice. Hansie Cronje sold matches. Salman Butt’s bowlers delivered no-balls to order. Douglas Jardine aimed fast bowling at Australian ribcages for an entire Ashes. Yet the vote went to a piece of abrasive paper and a plan hatched in a dressing room by the then-best batter in the world.
Cape Town, 2018: the one that cost three careers
The third Test against South Africa was already ugly — Quinton de Kock and David Warner’s stairwell confrontation in Durban, the Kagiso Rabada suspension overturned on appeal — when Bancroft was filmed working on the ball on day three. Australia’s initial line, that he had used tape and granules from the pitch, collapsed within 48 hours.
Cricket Australia’s investigation found Warner had instructed Bancroft to use sandpaper and that captain Steve Smith knew of the plan and did nothing. Smith and Warner were banned for 12 months, Bancroft for nine. Coach Darren Lehmann resigned. Warner was barred from Australian leadership positions for life, a sanction only lifted in 2022 when he withdrew his appeal application.
Several TMS contributors made the same point when ranking it: the offence itself was minor by the standards of cricket’s ball-tampering history. Mike Atherton kept dirt in his pocket at Lord’s in 1994 and was fined £2,000. Pakistan were penalised five runs by Darrell Hair at The Oval in 2006, refused to take the field, and handed over the only forfeited Test in the game’s 149-year history. Neither ended anyone’s career.
What made Newlands different was the cover-up, the cameras, and the gap between Australia’s self-image and the evidence. Smith’s tearful Sydney airport news conference remains the most-watched artefact of the whole affair.
The fixing years readers have not forgiven
Second and third in your vote came the two cases that threatened the result of matches rather than the condition of the ball.
- Hansie Cronje, 2000. Delhi police released transcripts of the South Africa captain negotiating with bookmaker Sanjeev Chawla. Cronje first denied everything, then admitted to the King Commission that he had taken money over several years — including, it emerged, to engineer the run-chase in the Centurion Test against England in January that year, a match long celebrated as a thriller. He was banned for life and died in a plane crash in June 2002, aged 32.
- The Lord’s spot-fix, 2010. A News of the World sting captured agent Mazhar Majeed predicting three no-balls before they were bowled. Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif delivered them; captain Salman Butt had sanctioned it. The ICC banned Butt for 10 years, Asif seven and Amir five. In November 2011 Southwark Crown Court jailed all three — Butt for 30 months, Asif a year, Amir six months. Amir, 18 at the time, returned to Test cricket in 2016.
Those two cases built the architecture modern Test cricket now operates inside: the ICC’s Anti-Corruption Unit, mandatory reporting of approaches, phone restrictions in dressing rooms, and the education programmes every contracted player sits through.
The older wounds, and why they still rank
Bodyline finished fourth, which says something about how cricket transmits its grievances across generations. Jardine’s leg theory won England the 1932-33 Ashes 4-1, fractured Bert Oldfield’s skull, and produced Bill Woodfull’s line to Pelham Warner that there were two teams out there but only one playing cricket. It strained Anglo-Australian diplomatic relations and forced a change to the laws on leg-side fielders.
Higher than many expected was the D’Oliveira affair of 1968. Basil D’Oliveira made 158 against Australia at The Oval, was omitted from England’s South Africa tour, then added when Tom Cartwright withdrew. John Vorster’s government refused to accept a Cape Coloured player; the tour was cancelled, and South Africa spent 21 years in sporting isolation. Readers who placed it top argued it is the only entry on the list where cricket’s scandal and the wider moral question are the same thing.
Sydney’s 2008 “Monkeygate” — Harbhajan Singh’s three-Test ban for racially abusing Andrew Symonds, reduced on appeal to a fine after India threatened to abandon the tour — rounded out the top six.
The pattern across your votes is consistent: punishments are remembered less than the response. Cricket was slow on Cronje, slow on apartheid, and quick on Newlands. Whether it would move as fast today, with franchise leagues paying more than many national contracts and the anti-corruption unit stretched across formats it was never built for, is the question the next entry on this list will answer.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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