‘I felt I did nothing wrong’ – du Plessis

Speaking for the first time since being found guilty of ball-tampering on Tuesday evening, South Africa’s stand-in captain Faf du Plessis used the first half of his pre-match press conference to continue to claim innocence. Du Plessis began with an explanation of what he considered the difference between altering the condition of the ball and merely looking after it, and that he firmly believed he was only doing the latter.

“Yesterday was the hearing and the verdict was that I was guilty. I completely disagree with that. I felt like I have done nothing wrong,” du Plessis said. “There’s two ways of looking at it, either ball-shining or ball-tampering. For me, if you talk about ball-tampering, that is something that’s wrong. It’s picking the ball, scratching the ball.

“Shining is something that all cricketers would say is not in that same space. It is something all cricketers do and I think there will be a lot of emphasis after this incident on where the game is going, what the ICC is going to do about it. I don’t believe shining is wrong. It’s not like I was trying to cheat or anything. I was shining a ball and I see no problem with that.”

Du Plessis admitted he had a “massive mint” in his mouth and was not trying to be insidious about what he was doing in using saliva that had mixed with the sweet to shine the ball, but he questioned why he would have escaped charge had his actions not been seen by television cameras. “I wasn’t trying to actually hide it,” he said. “I put a massive mint in my mouth and my mouth was that wide open. Whether you shine the ball with a sweet in your mouth or whether you don’t see the sweet, and the sweet is still there, it’s exactly the same thing.”

And according to du Plessis, he has received enough support from both current and former players, including Australian captain Steven Smith, who in his own press conference said his team “along with every other, shine the ball the same way”, to know that it is commonplace in the game.

“The ex-players have spoken about it. It’s part of our game. It’s been an unwritten rule,” du Plessis said. “Some people use sunblock to shine the ball. I know of people who carry lip-ice in their pocket and shine the cricket ball or gum. So many things. It’s just so difficult to say what is right and what is wrong. To say that when you have a sweet in your mouth, it’s wrong but when you have a sweet in your mouth and the camera doesn’t pick up on it, it’s okay. It’s just a really …

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