Toddlers with their fingers in the cookie jar rarely look as guilty as cricketer Cameron Bancroft did on Saturday afternoon in Cape Town during Australia's third Test against South Africa. It had already been a bitterly contested series, with a suspension (later overturned), altercations between players and claims of a hacked Twitter account.
Then, with Australia struggling to slow down South Africa's second innings during the afternoon session of the third day of the five-day match, images started fizzing round the globe of Bancroft scrubbing the match ball with intense and suspicious while his side was fielding. Soon after, he was caught once again on camera, surreptitiously transferring a yellow object from his pocket to the front of his cricket whites, before claiming to the umpires that the item that had aroused their suspicions was actually a soft black cloth.