Faf du Plessis reveals South Africa used binoculars after getting suspicious of Australia ball tampering in 2018 series

Faf said that Starc getting wild reverse swing in 1st Test in Durban made SA camp suspicious.

Former South Africa captain Faf du Plessis was at the helm of affairs when the infamous 2018 series against Australia took place in the rainbow nation. He recently opened up on the 'Sandpaper gate' that rocked Australian cricket, saying that the Proteas suspected Australia of ball-tampering long before the incident happened.

Writing in his autobiography titled 'Faf: Through Fire' which will release on October 28, Du Plessis claimed that the Proteas suspected Australia of ball-tampering from the first Test of the series.

"During the first Test in Durban, the Australian pace attack had got the ball to reverse insanely. Mitchell Starc claimed nine wickets and, although I regard him as one of the best proponents of reverse-swing bowling I have ever seen or faced, those deliveries in Durban were borderline unplayable. He would come in around the wicket with a badly deteriorated ball and get it to hoop past us. Our balls had also reversed but not nearly as much as theirs," Du Plessis wrote in his book as per Fox Sports.

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Later on, broadcaster cameras caught Cameron Bancroft using a yellow piece of sandpaper on the ball and hiding it in his trousers. While Bancroft, due to his actions, was suspended for nine months, the then captain Steve Smith and his deputy David Warner were also banned from competitive cricket for a year, having played a part in the plot.

Du Plessis also claimed that the South Africans used binoculars to keep an eye on Australian bowlers and what was happening with the ball.

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"We suspected that someone had been nurturing the ball too much to get it to reverse so wildly, and we watched the second Test at St George's through binoculars, so that we could follow the ball more closely while Australia was fielding. When we noticed that the ball was going to David Warner quite often - our changing room must have looked like a birdwatching hide as we peered intently through our binoculars. There was a visible difference between how Mitchell Starc got the ball to reverse in the first Test in Durban and the final Test in Johannesburg. We now know that there was an obvious reason for that," he added.

Mitchell Starc picked 9 wickets in the match as Australia won the first Test by 118, but lost the four-match series 1-3.