PERTH: South Africa captain Faf du Plessis says there’ll be one unmentionable when it comes to sledging the Australian team during the three-match limited-overs series, and it’s potentially the most obvious.

Du Plessis on Friday said his South Africans won’t mention ball tampering, a situation that occurred during the Cape Town test in March and which resulted in lengthy bans to Australia captain Steve Smith and opening batsmen David Warner and Cameron Bancroft.

South African broadcasters were tipped off that Australian players appeared to be tampering with the ball during that match, and eventually got vision of Bancroft using sandpaper to change the condition of the red leather ball.

Du Plessis has twice been found guilty of ball tampering. One of those occasions came during South Africa’s previous test tour to Australia, when he was accused of using sugary saliva from a hard candy to change the condition of the ball.

He avoided a ban over that incident, and the Australian home crowd was vocal in its criticism of Du Plessis during the next Test when he made a pink-ball century during a day-night Test in Adelaide.

“I don’t think us as a team would go there,” Du Plessis said of mentioning ball-tampering during banter on the pitch. “It’s got nothing to do with the cricket it’s in the past. In terms of what happened in Newlands, that’s in the past for us. For us, it’s business as usual.”

The first ODI is scheduled for Nov 4 in Perth, followed by matches on Nov 9 (Adelaide) and Nov 11 (Hobart).

Published in Dawn, October 27th , 2018

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