Fanie de Villiers : We actually said to our cameramen ... go out and have a look boys

Things seem to be going from bad to worse for the Australian Cricket team since Saturday evening, with skipper Steven Smith and vice-captain David Warner both under-fire for their alleged involvement in the ball-tampering saga. Smith was handed a one-Test ban and fined his entire match fee by the ICC governing body post the incident and was asked to step down from his role as captain of the national team, while Warner was stripped of the vice-captain tag as well.

Former South African pacer Fanie De Villiers has come out to claim that it was he who urged the cameramen to track the activities of the Australian cricketers as he suspected that something did not seem right.

“I said earlier on, that if they could get reverse swing in the 26th, 27th, 28th over then they’re doing something different from what everyone else does,’’ 

“We actually said to our cameramen ... go out (and) have a look boys. They’re using something. They searched for an hour and a half until they saw something and then they started following (Cameron) Bancroft and they actually caught him out at the end,’’ De Villiers told RSN Radio.

Cameron Bancroft, the player who was caught on camera, was handed a 75 percent match fee fine and given three demerit points by the ICC body. De Villiers was initially baffled as to how the Aussie bowlers managed to get reverse-swing on the ball after the 27th over which triggered his suspicions.

“It’s impossible for the ball to get altered like that on cricket wickets where we knew there was grass on, not a Pakistani wicket where there’s cracks every centimetre. We’re talking about (a) grass covered wicket where you have to do something else to alter the shape, the roughness of the ball on the one side. You have to get the one side wetter, heavier than the other side,’’ he said.

“Australian teams getting reverse swing before the 30th over ... they had to do something. If you use cricket ball and scratch it against a normal iron or steel gate or anything, anything steel on it, it reverse swings immediately. That’s the kind of extra alteration you need to do,’’ De Villiers added.