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Dane Heverin from Fox SportsOctober 9th, 2026 10:00 am
When Australia’s Test team walks out in front of a hostile South African crowd for the first time since the infamous 2018 series, the man caught with sandpaper in his pocket — and later down his pants – will surely wonder how different things might have been.
Cameron Bancroft will be a world away from Durban, where his old Test teammates will face the music in the first Test starting Friday.
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While Steve Smith almost certainly takes on the role of public enemy number one and Australia’s storied bowling attack cop abuse from over the fence about their naivety to the happenings of Sandpapergate, Bancroft will be a watched on by a few hundred cricket diehards and Western Australian Cricket Association staff members.
As the players return to the field for the second session of day one in Durban, Bancroft will be inside the sanctity of Western Australia’s dressing room having wrapped up play on day two of their Sheffield Shield season opener against Queensland in Perth.
The 33-year-old can be forgiven if his mind wanders elsewhere at that time.
And one act that takes place in dressing rooms from the professional game through to the lowest levels of club cricket may show Bancroft’s teammates that he has entered a portal to another world.
In the whirlwind of those tumultuous days in Cape Town, one memory is burned into the brain of long-time cricket journalist Peter Lalor.
Along with the rest of the Australian press pack, Lalor was bashing away on his laptop in the foyer of the team hotel on the morning that Smith, David Warner and Bancroft packed their bags and were sent home.
What he witnessed was an incredible insight into the mental state of each man.
“I remember Steve Smith coming over the morning he was banned, and sent home, to have a chat with us and just to catch up. In a way, I think he wanted to talk to somebody,” Lalor recalled on The Grade Cricketer podcast.
“Davey was like this scolded cat over in the corner and I’ll never forget looking across and seeing Cam Bancroft.
“He was shadow batting in front of a mirror.”
Old habits die hard for cricketers.
If Bancroft finds himself completing the same act on Friday evening, he will surely ponder what might have been – like he must have been that morning.
The lasting shadow of Sandpapergate means Bancroft is far from Australian cricket’s forgotten man.
But what has been lost among the chaos of Cape Town was that a day earlier, the opening batter looked like he might have finally taken a ginormous step towards a long Test career.
In Australia’s first innings at Newlands, Bancroft was the only member of the visitors’ batting line-up to pass 50 as Kagiso Rabada and Morne Morkel ran riot taking four wickets apiece. The Western Australian made 77 off 103 balls before being trapped LBW by Vernon Philander.
It was not his highest Test score — that came with an unbeaten 82 in a commanding fourth innings run chase on debut against England at the Gabba — but it was the innings that showed the selectors’ faith was justified.
Australia’s 4-0 Ashes victory during the home summer was a run fest, but in his first series in the baggy green, Bancroft failed to fill his boots.
He finished the series with 179 runs at 25.57.
Aside from Peter Handscomb, who was dropped after the second Test, every other member of Australia’s top seven averaged more than 47 for the series.
Bancroft’s Ashes series was better remembered for a press conference with Smith after the Gabba Test where the opener shared a story about being headbutted by Jonny Bairstow.
Smith was in stitches and everyone else was a bit perplexed as Bancroft regaled the journalists in Brisbane with a “really weird” tale from a night out in Perth earlier in the tour when members of the England and West Australian squads crossed paths.
“He didn’t knock me over,” Bancroft said.
“I’ve actually got the heaviest head in the West Australian squad.
“It was a good hit, play on.”
Bancroft had developed a reputation as a bit of a character and the ultimate team man – someone who was willing to tell such a story following their Test debut to try and get in an opponent’s head for the rest of the series.
The selectors kept the faith for the South African tour because they had also seen value in the fact that the dogged opener averaged 56 balls at the crease in that Ashes series – blunting the new Kookaburra before the likes of Smith and the Marsh brothers put England to the sword.
Bancroft’s first innings at Cape Town was a transformation from the style that was more Geoffrey Boycott than Michael Slater.
He drove down the ground, and through the covers, pulled and clipped off his pads like a man possessed.
“The first innings in Cape Town — that was the best innings I’ve probably played in any form of cricket,” Bancroft said in an interview with The Guardian in 2021.
“I scored in a lot of different areas, hit [14] boundaries and felt able to put pressure on the South African bowlers. Off the front and the back foot, I felt really good even though we struggled to build partnerships. It was a great confidence boost against quality bowling. Rabada, Philander, [Morkel] …”
He added: “It came down for me just when I was really improving at that level. It felt like I’d thrown a lot away. I hadn’t got a Test 100 yet, but I felt I was on my way to achieving that.”
Part One: ‘What did you f***ing say?’ How guns, scandal and toxic ultimatum lit Sandpapergate fuse
Part Two: A hidden act had saved Australia from its deepest shame… then came sickening snub
Bancroft was surely remembering the feeling of that innings when he was in front of that hotel foyer mirror.
It was an escape from the despair he was feeling after effectively tanking his Test career by being caught with the sandpaper.
The then-25-year-old was the most junior member of the Australian team at the time.
There was a widespread feeling that the team’s leaders had loaded the gun and got Bancroft to pull the trigger.
That was reflected in Smith and Warner copping 12-month bans, while Bancroft was given nine months on the sidelines – allowing him to return during the following summer’s Big Bash.
Throughout his time in the Australian set-up, the opening batter gave the impression that he was the little brother trying to fit in with the cooler, older kids by doing as they told him to do.
He admitted as much in that interview with The Guardian five years ago.
“Absolutely,” Bancroft replied when asked if he was ready to do almost anything that the senior members of the team asked him.
“I grew up idolising Test cricketers and that was a dream I wanted for me. Holding that so sacred to my heart made me a little naive and vulnerable to wanting to be embraced and a part of it all.
“At that point I hadn’t really grasped the concept that cricket’s just a game. Yes, you’re playing for Australia. Yes, it’s Test cricket. Yes, it’s something to be really proud of. But it is just a game.
“I invested too much to the point where I lost control of my values. What had become important to me was being liked, being well valued, feeling really important to my teammates, like I was contributing something by using sandpaper on a cricket ball.
“That’s something I don’t think I even understood until that mistake happened. But it’s part of the journey and a hard lesson I needed to learn.”
Bancroft had the chance to play Test cricket again after South Africa.
With his West Australian mentor Justin Langer now coaching the national team, Bancroft was recalled for the 2019 Ashes in England.
He, Warner and Smith were abused relentlessly by the English crowd, but only the latter could let his performances to do the talking.
Bancroft made 8 and 7 at Edgbaston.
He followed it up with scores of 13 and 16 at Lord’s.
Marcus Harris took his place at the top of the order for the third Test at Headingley and Bancroft has never been back since — his career record reads 10 Tests, three fifties and an average of 26.23.
Remarkably, Bancroft finished the series with a better average (11) than fellow openers Warner (9.5) and Harris (9.66) as Stuart Broad and Jofra Archer dominated with the new Dukes ball.
Harris was dropped after that series but was brought back the following summer for India’s famous victory at the Gabba and played four more Ashes Tests the following season.
There were times when Bancroft appeared certain to don the baggy green again.
When Warner retired, the West Australian had topped the Sheffield Shield run charts the summer before.
His tally of 945 runs was nearly 300 more than his nearest challenger.
He had also consistently piled on the runs in the English county cricket.
But the Australian hierarchy decided to trial Smith opening the batting to allow Cameron Green to return to the side at No.4.
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Injury would be added to insult for Bancroft later that summer.
He missed the Sheffield Shield final after falling off his bike and ending up in hospital.
The next summer, Australian fans were crying out for a specialist opener after the Smith experiment proved to be short-lived.
Bancroft started the Shield season with scores of 0, 0, 8 and 2.
In his two matches for Australia A, which served as bat-off with other contenders Harris, Nathan McSweeney and Sam Konstas, Bancroft scored 0, 16, 3 and 0.
There was the odd unlucky dismissal in that wretched run, but there was no way the selectors were going to pick him with 29 runs at 3.62.
McSweeney instead debuted as a makeshift opener and Konstas would be drafted in on Boxing Day.
Shortly after, Bancroft ended up on the sidelines once again following a sickening head clash in the outfield with Sydney Thunder teammate Daniel Sams at Perth’s Optus Stadium.
Before that setback, his case was not helped by his old opening partner telling the world why not to pick him.
“In my eyes, it’s about his front foot being pointed out to point,” Warner said on Fox Cricket during an ODI between Australia and Pakistan at the MCG in November 2024.
“When there’s faster air speed, when the bowlers are bowling faster, he’s going to get rolled through, LBW or he’ll get caught in the slips cordon.”
Others, particularly out west, believed there was more to it than a technical flaw.
When Bancroft was overlooked following Warner’s retirement, West Australians were outraged that their Shield star had been snubbed – even if it meant that one of their own in Green was coming back in.
The conspiracy theories went into overdrive.
“He just didn’t fit in,” AFL great Brad Hardie proclaimed on 6PR’s Wide World of Sports.
“And that’s political, that’s not on ability.”
Former Australian all-rounder Tom Moody wrote on social media: “Selection is never an easy task, but the oversight of Cameron Bancroft is shocking.
“His first-class numbers are so compelling against his peers it feels there is another agenda which I hope was communicated to him honestly!”
The “agenda” Moody referred to came back to Sandpapergate.
In that 2021 interview with The Guardian, Bancroft was asked about whether Australia’s bowlers knew of the sandpaper plan.
“I think it’s pretty probably self-explanatory,” he replied.
For many in the cricket world, the bombshell comment confirmed their suspicions.
“Well, anyone who thought there were only three people involved still believes in Santa Claus and the Easter bunny,” former Australian captain Ian Chappell told Wide World of Sports radio.
But it did not sit well with his former Australian teammates.
Pat Cummins, who would become Test captain later that year, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon released a joint statement declaring their innocence.
Many believed that it opened a rift between Bancroft and the national team.
So, when he was repeatedly overlooked, it became a hot topic.
Reports circulated that Cummins called Bancroft to stress that Sandpapergate had nothing to do with the decision to overlook him following Warner’s retirement.
“There’s not a member of the team that would have an issue with Cam playing. We certainly don’t have an issue with it,” Australia’s chair of selectors George Bailey said at the time.
“A lot of people tend to forget the fact that Cam has actually played Test cricket since returning from the ban. It was a long time ago.
“We’ve all moved well past that. I’d be disappointed if people were looking to that as a reason. That’s not the case. Never has been and never will be.”
As the current series has drawn closer, Bancroft found an unlikely ally.
South African captain Faf du Plessis was at the centre of many of the flashpoints of the 2018 series.
Some believe du Plessis had started the reverse swing arms race in 2016 when he was caught using saliva from a lolly on the ball during the Proteas’ series victory in Australia.
He had already been pinged for scratching the ball on a zipper during a Test against Pakistan in Dubai three years earlier.
But unlike Bancroft, du Plessis avoided any suspension for his misdemeanour – he was instead fined and handed demerit points by the ICC, with Cricket South Africa taking no action.
Speaking to former teammate Vernon Philander on the ‘Beyond the Boundary’ podcast, du Plessis suggested that Bancroft’s actions showed he had not mastered the dark art but also shared his sympathy for his opponent.
“Bancroft, and honestly, my first instincts with him were, I felt sorry for the guy,” du Plessis said.
“When I saw him, first of all, he did that, and I was like, ‘Shame’.
“He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know how to get the ball to reverse swing, because taking a piece of sandpaper out of your pocket with cameras, it’s not the most clever thing to do.
“Then it was that whole incident. I mean, we were sitting after the day’s play. And we were like, ‘The team is taking like an hour before the press conference has to start’. So, we’re like, ‘Why are they taking so long? What are they doing?’
“And then they issued that statement. And that statement was just like putting blitz under a fire and just going there. And they were saying, ‘No one knows about it. The captain had no idea. The coach had no idea’.
“And everyone was just like, ‘Well, hang on, what’s going on here?’ Everyone knows what goes on in a dressing room.”
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No one outside of that Australian touring party may ever know what exactly went on in the visitors’ dressing room in Cape Town before, and after, Bancroft was sprung with sandpaper.
The knowledge of what really went on has clearly weighed heavily on Bancroft.
In the aftermath, he dived heavily into the world of yoga and meditation.
Now, aged 33, Bancroft has a far more mature head on his shoulders than when he made the mistake that triggered one of the biggest scandals in Australian sporting history.
In the end, it will hurt him that when he next shadow bats in the mirror that question of what his Test career might have been will linger.
But in many interviews in the years since, Bancroft has made it clear that he is at peace with how his life has turned out.
Perhaps that ‘what if’ will strike a chord more with sympathetic Australian cricket fans now, because the Test team sure could have used an old-fashioned, dogged opener at times in the past few years.
Source: www.foxsports.com.au
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