Add it to the immeasurable list of things that you can blame Covid for. Without the pandemic, Australia’s Test team would have headed to South Africa in February 2021, less than three years after the 2018 sandpaper scandal saw them come home from Johannesburg in disarray. With memories fresh, the attention would have been intense on the returning players: headlined by sacked captain Steve Smith, his replacement Tim Paine, and principal antagonist David Warner, with a support act of bowlers Nathan Lyon, Josh Hazlewood, Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc.
At least, though, that prompt rematch would have lanced the boil of Australian cricket’s great modern humiliation, after Cameron Bancroft was caught sandpapering the match ball in the third Test at Cape Town. Instead, a lack of appetite for pandemic-era touring saw Cricket Australia cancel the 2021 tour before kicking a replacement years down the road, and while there have been white-ball trips in the interim, it has now taken eight years for an Australian Test return to supersede their ill-starred previous visit.
