Mark Duffield - The Editorial (20.10.2026)

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Mark Duffield (0:46)

Rating WA for WA. This is Mornings with Mark Duffield on SENWA.

Hello, everybody. Welcome to the SENWA radio studio out here at Optus Stadium. Tuesday morning in Perth, and we are here thanks to Beaumont Homes. Award-winning design, built to be loved forever. It's going to be mostly sunny in our fair city today. A top of 21 degrees. Made in WA for WA. This is Mornings with Mark Duffield on SENWA.

The second test continued last night in Quebec.

The old Port Elizabeth. The Aussies have South Africa 5 for 97 Of course, Scotty Boland starring again.

I was interested to hear some comments by our former coach and West Australian cricket legend Justin Langer on a prime program alongside former all-rounder Shane Watson. And this test series was always going to evoke some uncomfortable memories for Australian cricket. It is the first test series we have played in South Africa since the infamous Sandpaper Gate series of 2018

And I suspect that Langer might have made a few people a little more uncomfortable with his observations on the issue on that show with Shane Watson. So people, I think, have been dancing around the truth on the 2018 Sandpaper Gate scandal, since it happened. And Langer might have come closer to the truth than most when he made the comment on the treatment of Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft in the wake of the scandal. He made the observation that the trio had not just taken the fall for the rest of the Australian team, but they had taken the fall for all of world cricket. And he based that observation on this one. He said, what I mean by that is that the ball has not reversed swung anywhere in the world since that day. And that day, of course, is the day that Cameron Bancroft was caught using sandpaper on the field. Now, I'm not sure that his comment is totally correct because the ball occasionally reverses a bit these days, but he's absolutely right in that the dramatic reverse swing we were seeing in a lot of cricket matches in the lead up to Sandpaper Gate has all but disappeared from the game, and it's been replaced by a vastly watered down and diluted form of the art. So, cast your minds back and remember what Mitchell Stark was doing in the test before Sandpaper Gate. He was coming around the wicket. He was hurling the ball at 140 kilometers now at a right-handers leg stump before it would swerve a couple of meters before the bat increase and hit the off stump. We haven't seen that since Sandpaper Gate from the Aussies. We haven't seen that since Sandpaper Gate from any team in World Cricket. So, what this does tell you is that this wasn't just about Bancroft, Smith and Warner, and this wasn't just about Australia. This was about what was happening in World Cricket, which we knew anyway because others had been caught, accused or admitted to altering the ball in one way or another before the Aussies got caught. Langer also quoted English all-rounder Andrew Flintoff. And while politicians banged their chests, spectators booed the Aussies, and South Africa made smug documentaries on the topic. Flintoff summed up Langer's thoughts on the issue when he said three words, those in glass houses. Now, we can finish that sentence for Freddie and adapt it for cricket. Those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, especially when they have been hurling cricket balls they themselves have tampered with. And we had the Lollies from England in the EPIC 2005 series against Australia. We had South Africa's own Faf Duplassie twice being caught altering the ball, once by rubbing it on his zipper in 2013 against Pakistan, and one following the lead of England and using Lollies a few years later, this time against Australia in Australia. So that time Duplassie was fined his entire match fee. He was handed demerit points but was able to play in the next test. Now, he would later claim that his breach wasn't as serious as Australia's use of sandpaper, but he did confirm that ball tampering was a common practice in world cricket. And this is what former American Vice President Al Gore would have called an inconvenient truth, peeking out from behind a rock here. The Aussies weren't the only ones doing this, and the natural extension of that is that Bancroft, Warner and Smith weren't the only ones with knowledge of something being done to the ball in the Australian team. And, as Langer pointed out more than once in his program with Watson, the minute the Aussies got caught, the ball mysteriously stopped reverse swinging dramatically all over the world, like the magic had been removed from cricket balls the world over. And meanwhile, the farce of people tiptoeing past and around the truth continues. Our bowling cartel, for example, issued a warning after Bancroft answered a question from a journalist when he declared that it was self-evident how much was known by others. There are constant rumours about what Dave Warner might eventually put in a book. And there have been talks between Usman Qawaja and Pat Cummins about what might be in his book when it comes out. 487 736 736 is our text line. Give us your thoughts and questions. 1312 55 is the Barra and Doday open line. Barra and Doday because the little things are everything.