Sandpapergate: The tough questions about who knew what that never got asked

October 9, 2026 — 2:30am

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Over the last fortnight, so many of us have been enthralled in a game of “Remember When” regarding a blizzard of rude recollections about the Sandpaper-gate events of 2018 in South Africa.

Remember when, indeed …

Australia’s Test team is back in South Africa this week, where that imbroglio kicked off eight years and seven months ago.

Back then, I wrote that the Australian players needed to lawyer-up and demand a fair hearing; such was the schemozzle of their head-spiking. A year later I opined that they’d been bashed up too hard.

In 2022, I dared to write that David Warner’s lifetime leadership ban constituted moral policing ham-fistedly disguised as the metering-out of discipline. Nothing Cricket Australia (CA) has done since gives me the slightest inclination to deviate from these views.

There’s my remember when …

On the Saturday of the Cape Town Test, Cameron Bancroft was filmed comically shoving sandpaper into his underpants. The next day, CA’s then chief executive James Sutherland fronted the media, without consulting the captain, Steve Smith.

By Tuesday, CA scrambled a two-man squad to arrive in South Africa, to investigate. The probe was completed inside 100 hours. Only selected witnesses had their chains rattled.

By the following day, Smith and Warner had been handed 12-month bans from all cricket, Bancroft nine months. Smith was barred from leadership roles for a further year. Warner was banned from leading for life.

By Thursday, they were on their way home. Within days, each had cried on camera, blubbering their scripted........

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