It took some time coming — or should I say, caught tampering — but the seam has been opened on white-dominated cricket teams caught by white umpires for messing with the ball. Remember England’s Ian Gould and Australia’s Rod Ticker were standing in the Dubai Test. Nevertheless it has been deemed that the act “was not part of a deliberate and/or prolonged attempt to unfairly manipulate the condition of the ball.”

Funnily enough Faf du Plessis had pleaded guilty to the charge of ball tampering for which he was only fined 50 per cent of his match fee. Last time it happened in the Champions Trophy this summer, it was umpire Aleem Dar of Pakistan who got on the case. And Bob Willis made more than tacit remarks on air that pointed to Ravi Bopara as the culprit, since he was mostly in charge of maintaining the condition of the ball.

Yet the ICC and the media were at pains to say that no charges had been laid by the umpires after the match. This despite the Australians’ claim a match earlier that the ball had seemed to be doing too much suddenly as their batsmen faced the England bowlers.

On a tour of South Africa a few years back, England’s Stuart Broad was accused of ball tampering as the camera caught him stopping the ball with his spikes as it rolled down the pitch, and then pressing it a bit. But despite a serious protest by the South African team management, it was dismissed as incidental and not deliberately done.

There have always been racist connotations on such controversies. Any incident of ball tampering or spot fixing involving the white-dominated teams or white nations is downplayed while the ICC and the media seem to jump to suspicions if it involves teams from South Asia or West Indies. It was brought out most poignantly when Darrel Hair took it upon himself to have the ball changed at The Oval as Pakistan bowled to England in the final Test. It led to Inzamam and his team refusing to come out after tea despite the perplexed and helpless team management’s pleadings. It was only an email from Hair to the then CEO Malcolm Speed that forced ICC’s hand otherwise Hair would still be tromping around today like Churchill.

Yes, Shahid Afridi took a couple of bites of the ball in Australia while surrounded by 26 cameras and once did a twist on the good length spot while crossing the pitch in between overs and was punished both times. It was too blatant a job. But in 1994, Michael Atherton was caught by the camera rubbing dirt on the ball that he was carrying in his pocket. And he was the England captain at that, all Cambridge educated and playing at Lord’s! After some brouhaha and a press conference he was fined but he never admitted that he was cheating and insisted he was carrying dirt in his pocket to dry his hands on a humid day. However, he admitted he hadn’t told the match referee about it.

Former England captain Marcus Trescothick revealed in his book that he sucked sweets and took a sweet from his mouth and used it to shine the ball for the England bowlers, who were the stars of the Ashes, winning the series in 2005.

We all know about Hansie Cronje, but 20 years before that England were following on 225 runs behind Australia’s 401 and were 135-7 in their second innings. Ladbrokes offered 500-1 for England winning from there and both Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh bet on Australia losing. Lillee & Co were thumped around by Ian Botham and eventually needing 129 to win, lost the match by 18 runs. But that was soon brushed aside with the claim that the two Australians would not sell their country ‘for a few quid’.

Some five years earlier, England was touring India. John Lever had taken 10 wickets on his Test debut and he and Bob Willis amazingly swung the ball in dry Indian conditions as India lost the first three Tests. Near the end of the third Test he was spotted by the Indian captain Bishen Singh Bedi as wearing a thin, Vaseline-dipped gauze wire on his forehead, which he would frequently wipe with his bowling hand and even rubbed the ball on it. Both explained that it was to stop the sweat running onto his eyes but interestingly sported long hair. Vaseline was already banned and once this was prohibited, England lost the next Test and battled to draw the last one.

Then there have been the insinuations against Muralitharan, Shoaib Akhtar and Saeed Ajmal of bending the elbow when delivering and fixing is always zeroed in on non-white countries; Samuels and a Kenyan player have been banned for a year for fixing match events. In 2010 when Pakistan were accused of spot fixing in an ODI (following the revelations during the Test series) ICC immediately called a press conference and announced a full enquiry, which eventually cleared Pakistan. But when Australia were accused by a newspaper of some shady happenings a few months later, ICC officially ignored it saying they can’t order enquiries based on newspaper reports.

As the South Africa Vice Captain A.B. de Villiers said: “We are not a team that scratches the ball.” Of course not A.B., but do keep in mind we’re only scratching the surface here.

The racist undertones, that at times spilled over into the open as players from South Asia complained that white players were always given the benefit of the doubt, may have been quieted by this episode in Dubai where Faf du Plessis and Captain Graeme Smith were penalised publicly by umpires. If anything at all can be made of this, even half jokingly, is that both Match Referee David Boon and TV umpire Paul Reiffel (who is thought to have noticed the act on TV cameras and relayed to on field umpires) are Australians. Don’t they and the Springboks just love to run each other down? But yea, it’s just some white mischief; pay up and carry on mate.

The writer is a business consultant and a former CEO and board member. He is an author and cricket writer by choice for over 30 years and has served as editor of Asian edition of The Cricketer International, UK.