Former umpire Ian Gould has opened up on the Australian team’s on-field behaviour and how they have had to change over time after the sandpapergate scandal in 2018 which resulted in the suspensions of Steve Smith, David Warner and young opener Cameron Bancroft for substantial periods of time.
The Australian cricket team has always been known for playing hard cricket and have never shied away from getting under the skin of the opposition with their on-field sledging and mental games off it.
But Gould, who played first-class cricket in England and was a member of the ICC Elite Panel of umpires, said the Australians probably took it a bit too far sometimes with their bullish behaviour, especially between 2014 and 2018.
Gould cited the 2014 Adelaide Test between Australia and India as an example of how even he was taken aback by what he saw from the players on the field.
“They used to railroad teams a little bit and it got out of hand. You would stand back and think ‘wow’.
“The first real incident during that time was Australia against India in Adelaide shortly after poor Phillip Hughes had passed away (in 2014). It was the most surreal game of cricket for two days that I have ever known. But for the next three days it was like a war out there,” Gould told BBC Radio’s Tuffers and Vaughan show.
“I believe Australia were out of control leading up to the ball-tampering issues,” he told the Times.
Gould, who retired last year after the 50-over World Cup in England, also opened up on the 2018 Cape Town Test scandal in which he was the TV umpire and spoke about how Cameron Bancroft apologised for lying to him after he was caught on camera trying to shove a yellow piece of sandpaper down his pants.
“I was sitting there minding my own business when the TV director said ‘I’ve got some pictures for you’. I then told the lads in the middle what I had been shown and asked them to ask Bancroft what he had in his pocket.
“He went in to his pocket and brought out a black sunglasses cloth. Within two balls the director is back on and saying ‘we’ve got a lot more footage’.
“Those were the fateful pictures of the yellow sandpaper and showed him putting it down his trousers. At the end of it all it was there in front of you.
“At the end of the day’s play he (Cameron Bancroft) put his tracksuit on, didn’t tell anyone where he was going and came into our room and apologised to us for lying. “You could see he was heartbroken but he came in for five minutes, apologised and got up and just walked away. It took a lot to do that,” Gould said.
