Unexploded grenades remain buried from Sandpapergate. Australia has the right man to dodge them — Whateley

In its simplest form this series sells itself: reigning world Test champion meets long-term No.1 ranked nation.

Richer still for the substantive rematch of a one-off final that saw the presumptive victor dethroned by a derided underdog in a colossal upset.

The puncher took his chance. But with no air of fluke.

The raising of the Mace at Lord’s in June, 2025 stands as a pinnacle achievement in South African cricket, all the sweeter coming against an arch-tormentor in Australia.

Adding to the curiosity of what looms, South Africa plays Test cricket so scarcely and perhaps never better, while Australia embarks on a fearsome 10-month odyssey having rarely appeared so unsure of itself.

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A three-Test series cast to more thoroughly examine temperament, strategy and skill in the quest for superiority.

In its simplest form that would be enough to ensure Australia’s Test tour of South Africa is the premier sporting event post our footy finals.

But as even a cursory interest over the past week will have revealed, the backdrop owes entirely to the incidents of eight years ago and the Sandpaper scandal.

Seismic events that shook Australian cricket to its core revisited, reimagined and reinterpreted as the team returns quite literally to the scene of the crime.

The outline of what transpired is painfully familiar.

Striking, though, is the lack of a complete and authoritative account of what transpired in and around Cameron Bancroft tucking that piece of yellow sandpaper into his strides in full view of an international television audience.

For all the pain endured the unexploded grenades remain buried.

MORE SANDPAPERGATE

PART ONE: ‘What did you f***ing say?’ How guns, scandal and toxic ultimatum lit Sandpapergate fuse

PART TWO: Hidden act had saved Australia from its deepest shame... then came a sickening snub

That 2018 tour was distinct for the undisguised and unrestrained hostility that engulfed the combatants from first contact.

You could feel it on arrival. Unusual and unsettling.

Australia was in the grip of siege mentality and not without cause.

The nasty edge to the conduct directed toward David Warner and his family should have been disavowed. Instead, it felt tacitly endorsed and perhaps worse.

There was much that should never have happened before sandpaper was taken onto the field, a fateful moment that didn’t happen in isolation.

As it will be on Friday, Kingsmead was the setting for the First Test and it set a tone of incident and suspicion.

Australian players barked into stump mics to have them muted, Nathan Lyon dropped a ball on the prone AB de Villiers’ head after effecting his run out.

There was the notorious bust-up in the stairwell between Warner and Quinton de Kock and the hasty leaking of that CCTV vision to fully villainise Australia.

And late on Day Four Mitch Starc got the old ball to bend around corners and claim the first Test for Australia with a stunning spell of reverse swing.

By Port Elizabeth the taunting was as blatant as it was unrefined.

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The crowd was provided with masks of Sonny Bill Williams. Warner provocatively strapped the base of his fingers in the field.

And Kagiso Rabada shouldered Steve Smith after dismissing the visiting captain.

The firebrand quick took 11 wickets in a player-of-the-match turn and held his country enthrall. Rabada was suitably suspended and preposterously reprieved by cricket’s toothless judicial code. A celebrity lawyer made a mockery of the game and Australia’s fury ominously built.

Caution and reason had been lost on the way to Day 3 in Cape Town. Whatever attempts had been made by those who might have intervened proved inadequate and ineffective. The team propelled toward self-destruction.

These were the worst of times. Australia was the self-appointed arbiter of the moral line – a fictional construct to excuse any level of boorish behaviour that progressively alienated the team from its public and infuriated opponents.

It would have a fearsome reckoning on the fields of South Africa.

Oddly that demeanour never really suited that Australian team beyond a couple of personalities. And even though almost half the characters remain, the character of this team is entirely removed from that previous incarnation.

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Pat Cummins has long vowed to play with a smile of his face and win through the test of skill. Some of the old heads have insisted there’s a more combative way. Cummins is entirely unfussed.

Perhaps that unfussed nature is precisely what will serve Australia best in the weeks ahead. Rather than a descension into the acrimony that long marked the feuds between South Africa and Australia.

A re-reading of the post-script from Durban eight years ago suggested an immediate softening of the hard-bitten approach, a step back from unbridled hostility. Had that been heeded much harm and circumspection would have been spared.

Inevitably Cummins will be confronted by the past at every turn here. But he is not a captain to indulge it.

— Gerard Whateley will write for Fox Sports during the South African Tour and leads the SEN Radio Broadcast of the three Test matches