<b>Shakya Mitra:</b> Tampering tales

Amidst the backlash that the Australian cricket team faced after their humiliating loss to South Africa at Hobart came a new controversy: TV footage showed South African captain Faf Du Plessis shining the ball with saliva and a foreign substance believed to be mint. 

While it may have done little to change the outcome of the contest, the Australian media had new ammunition to target the visitors  who had comprehensively outplayed their cricket team, while the South Africans insisted they had won fair and square and stood by their captain. 

Du Plessis was charged with ball-tampering by the International Cricket Council (ICC) and had his entire match fee docked. 

Over in India. Footage from the Rajkot Test showed Virat Kohli using what seemed a “sweet” to shine the ball. No hearing took place, as the incident was not brought to ICC’s  attention within five days.

It goes back a long time. One of the first instances of “ball-tampering” was during England’s tour of India in 1976-77. Fast bowler John Lever, who made his debut during the series took 26 wickets in five matches, an impressive number in sub-continental conditions. During the third test at Chennai on the advice of England’s physiotherapist, Lever applied Vaseline-impregnated gauze on to his eyebrow. Lever had a habit of taking sweat from his brow and applying it on the ball, but on this occasion, purely by accident, he ended up applying Vaseline. 

When he took off the gauze, the umpire realised a foreign substance had been used on the ball. The damage though had been done: Lever took five wickets during that particular innings, with the ball gaining more swing than deemed normal. 

This series remained Lever’s high point; in his next 16  tests, he took just 47 wickets.

Perhaps the most controversial series involving allegations of “ball-tampering” was in 1992 when Pakistan visited England. Pakistan were overwhelmingly the better side with the ball: Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis sharing 43 wickets as they used reverse-swing to devastating effect. The five-match series that Pakistan won 2-1 was an ill-tempered one, with the English possibly stung by their defeat to the same opposition in the 1992 World Cup final, accusing them of ball-tampering to get reverse swing.

Imran Khan mentor to both Akram and Younis, is alleged to have used a bottle top to alter the shape of the ball while playing a county game for Sussex. This lent further credence to the allegations against Akram and Younis, though when taken to court by England cricketers Allan Lamb and Ian Botham in the aftermath of the 1992 series, Khan emerged victorious.

In late 2001, footage appeared suggesting that Sachin Tendulkar was picking at the seam of the ball during a Test match against South Africa in Port Elizabeth. Mike Denness, the ICC match referee, charged him with ball-tampering, but soon a furore built in India. The one-match ban that was initially handed out did not get implemented. Denness, the match referee for the entire series, was replaced for the final Test match played as an “unofficial” game.

More than a decade after being on the receiving end of reverse swing, England were the ones setting the tone. A stunning 2-1 series win over the mighty Aussies in 2005, who had lost just one series in the past six years, was aided in no small part by the reverse swing that Andrew Flintoff and Simon Jones were generating. Marcus Trescothick, the England opener, admitted in his autobiography that he was aware of “Murray mints” being used to shine the ball.

In 2010, Stuart Broad stepped on a ball with his spikes, an incident former England captain Michael Vaughan believed would have got him into trouble had he played for Pakistan. The same year, Shahid Afridi was banned for two Twenty20 internationals after footage showed him biting into a ball.