Had he not panicked, Cameron Bancroft may have escaped getting caught for ball-tampering, says SuperSport TV production head Alvin Naicker

CHENNAI: A few minutes after Cameron Bancroft rubbed the ball with the yellow tape, SuperSport, the host broadcaster, had beamed it on the big screen. But Alvin Naicker, the head for production at SuperSport, still wasn’t sure what they had just seen. Interestingly, he goes on to say that had Bancroft not panicked and shoved the tape down the front of his trousers, the whole conspiracy would not have made news.

“We initially just saw that he had something in his hand and put it in his pocket, but we didn’t know what it was,” he was quoted as saying to Reuters. “It was only when he later panicked and put it in his underpants that we sighted the yellow tape.”

Naicker, who has been at SuperSport for more than two decades, credited one of his cameramen for very smartly focusing on coach Darren Lehmann the moment Bancroft’s indiscretion was aired on the big screen. “He (Bancroft) probably saw it two minutes after it happened and very smartly our cameraman focused on the coaching staff and we saw the coach (Lehmann) get on the walkie-talkie to the player down on the field (Peter Handscomb), who ran on to speak with Bancroft. It was then he panicked.”

While Naicker knew something was up even before he saw Lehmann reach for his walkie-talkie he couldn’t place his hands on what he was seeing till he saw Bancroft trying to hide foreign object inside his pants.