Oct 6, 2026 · 24 min · 10 segments
Australians woke up on a Sunday morning in 2018 to extraordinary vision plastered across their television screens and mobile phones: Cameron Bancroft, the opening batsman on the Australian men’s…
Daniel BrettigGuest
Samantha Selinger-MorrisHost
I expect that there'll be some who wanna stir it up, you know, in the crowds, as there have always been in South Africa.
There's always been rowdy and, uh, let's say well-oiled members of the crowd over here who wanna be provocative.
So I, I have to ask you though, I have to interject and say were they just delusional? Like, if they were caught red-handed on this massive screens stuffing sandpaper down his underwear to try to obscure what he had done, so just caught openly cheating in the most, you know, obvious of ways, did they just think it was gonna blow over? 'Cause that sounds crazy.
crazy.The Australian team and its players have come to terms over the years since, and probably not long after that event, to be honest, with the idea that they'd gotten caught up in their own bubble, and they had lost perspective on what was important in, certainly in terms of fair play, and what was not important.
Which was, you know, the, the thing that was central in their minds at that point was like, "We've gotta beat South Africa, and we've gotta find ways to beat South Africa because otherwise, you know, all our jobs are on the line." That was the kind of bubble that they'd gotten themselves into.
And so all of the things about, as I mentioned, fair play, the idea that you're not just trying to beat an opponent, you're a team of players who are watched by millions of followers, you're watched by families, you're watched by kids, parents who want an example set for their kids.
All of that had gone out the window, and so it was a real shock to the Australian system.
And the guys who are currently in South Africa, who were on the 2018 tour, you know, that's a, that's a lesson that I don't think any of them have forgotten.
And I actually spoke to a couple of those players today, and yeah, we actually talked about the idea that, you know, never forget that this is a game.
Never forget that it's not federal politics, it's not the UN, it's not something where if you lose, it's...
Yes, you wanna win, but it's not the disaster that they thought it might've been in 2018.
I expect that there'll be some who wanna stir it up, you know, in the crowds, as there have always been in South Africa.
There's always been rowdy and, uh, let's say well-oiled members of the crowd over here who wanna be provocative.
So I, I have to ask you though, I have to interject and say were they just delusional? Like, if they were caught red-handed on this massive screens stuffing sandpaper down his underwear to try to obscure what he had done, so just caught openly cheating in the most, you know, obvious of ways, did they just think it was gonna blow over? 'Cause that sounds crazy.
crazy.The Australian team and its players have come to terms over the years since, and probably not long after that event, to be honest, with the idea that they'd gotten caught up in their own bubble, and they had lost perspective on what was important in, certainly in terms of fair play, and what was not important.
Which was, you know, the, the thing that was central in their minds at that point was like, "We've gotta beat South Africa, and we've gotta find ways to beat South Africa because otherwise, you know, all our jobs are on the line." That was the kind of bubble that they'd gotten themselves into.
And so all of the things about, as I mentioned, fair play, the idea that you're not just trying to beat an opponent, you're a team of players who are watched by millions of followers, you're watched by families, you're watched by kids, parents who want an example set for their kids.
All of that had gone out the window, and so it was a real shock to the Australian system.
And the guys who are currently in South Africa, who were on the 2018 tour, you know, that's a, that's a lesson that I don't think any of them have forgotten.
And I actually spoke to a couple of those players today, and yeah, we actually talked about the idea that, you know, never forget that this is a game.
Never forget that it's not federal politics, it's not the UN, it's not something where if you lose, it's...
Yes, you wanna win, but it's not the disaster that they thought it might've been in 2018.
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