You could blame me too, says coach Sekar

Melbourne, May 16

Former Australia bowling coach David Sekar, who was with the team during the 2018 ball-tampering scandal, today said it was a “monumental mistake” which could have been prevented and for which fingers can also be pointed at him.

The review of Australia’s win-at-all-cost team culture after the incident led to varying punishments for then captain Steve Smith, his deputy David Warner and the man who had the sandpaper in his possession at that time, Cameron Bancroft.

But Sekar felt it was collective failure. “Obviously a lot of things went wrong at that time. The finger-pointing is going to go on and on and on. There was a lot of people to blame. It could have been me to blame, it could have been someone else. It could have been stopped and it wasn’t, which is unfortunate,” Sekar said. “Cameron’s (Bancroft) a very nice guy. He’s just doing it to get something off his chest… He’s not going to be the last.”

Sekar lamented that the incident is going to be associated with Australian cricket forever and there is nothing one can do about it.

The 54-year-old Sekar spoke after Bancroft made a startling revelation, suggesting that Australian bowlers at the time knew about the plot.

While Cricket Australia issued a statement saying that it was open to a re-investigation into the incident, Sekar said he was not sure what could possibly come out of it. — PTI