Stuart MacGill (Source: AFP Photos)
Days after Usman Khawaja made a stunning revelation about the 2018 Sandpaper Scandal, another Australian cricketer, Stuart MacGill, has come forward to admit to ball tampering in his playing days.
Khawaja led a storm in Cricket Australia when he claimed in his autobiography that the entire Australian squad knew about the sandpaper strategy used by Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft to tamper with the ball against South Africa in 2018.
Stuart MacGill makes shocking ball tampering confession
Amid this controversy, ex-Australia leg-spinner Stuart MacGill admitted that he used sandpaper to alter the condition of the ball during his playing days. Talking on the FanaticsTV YouTube show, he explained that he would cut a small square piece of sandpaper and tape it to his thumb.
MacGill later picked up the ball before play resumed after tea and scratched it with the sandpaper. And to avoid scrutiny, he would remove and discard the sandpaper before bowling began.
"I'd cut a small piece of sandpaper and tape it to my thumb," he said. "It was not a part of a massive 'global cheating scam'; I was just really curious to see what would happen and if it would work. And oh, it works (laughs)," MacGill said.
Apparently, Stuart MacGill was curious to see whether the technique worked and admitted that it did. But he clarified that he did these antics at a time when the use of sandpaper wasn’t considered a cheating scam.
"What they would do is the umpires as you're walking out on the ground, they used to put the ball sort of about 20 metres over the boundary. I would tape a little bit of a square of sandpaper on my thumb, pick the ball up just after tea, scratch the living daylights out of it, pull the sandpaper off, chuck it in the gutter before a ball had even been bowled. So nobody even knew that I'd done it, apart from all the scratches on the ball," he added.
However, this revelation has only added fuel to the ongoing controversy around the 2018 Sandpaper scandal. It remains to be seen if Cricket Australia would react to this claim.
Stuart MacGill’s international career
An elite leg-spinner from Perth, Stuart MacGill featured in 44 Tests for Australia from 1998 to 2008. He took 208 wickets in this period, often playing second fiddle to legend Shane Warne.
He averaged 29.02, including 12 five-wicket hauls and two ten-wicket match hauls. His best innings figures were 8/108, while his best match figures were 12/107.
Warne's retirement from international cricket in 2007 seemed to give MacGill a chance to become Australia's first-choice leg-spinner. However, recurring injuries affected his ability to maintain his place in the team.
Eventually, Stuart MacGill played his final Test against the West Indies on May 30, 2008. Later, he announced his retirement from international cricket during that series.
