Steve Smith (right) and David Warner have both been banned for 12 months
Image courtesy of: Zimbio
Cricket Australia have banned captain Steve Smith and vice-captain David Warner for 12 months, while opening batsman Cameron Bancroft has been suspended for nine months.
Smith and Warner have been banned from captaining Australia for two years as they and Bancroft were involved in a ball tampering scandal that shocked the cricketing world.
The players will be permitted to challenge the verdict of the investigation and the length of their bans through a Cricket Australia code of behaviour hearing with an independent commissioner.
The commissioner can decide whether the hearing will be a public or private affair, but the players will be allowed to have legal representation and call upon as many witnesses as they want.
The incident made headlines when Bancroft was seen taking a mysterious yellow sandpaper-like item out of his pocket and putting it down his trousers on the third day of the third Test against South Africa in Cape Town.
Smith and Bancroft subsequently admitted that they had in fact attempted to alter the condition of the ball.
The International Cricket Council (ICC) decided to ban Smith for one Test and fined him 100 percent of his match fee, while Bancroft was docked 75 percent of his match fee and handed three demerit points.
During a press conference on Tuesday, Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland revealed that Smith, Warner and Bancroft would leave South Africa on Wednesday and not feature in the fourth Test in Johannesburg, which begins on Friday.
As a result, Matt Renshaw, Glenn Maxwell and Joe Burns were called up as their replacements.
The ball tampering scandal has also affected Smith and Warner in regards to the Indian Premier League (IPL) as they resigned from their positions as captains of the Rajasthan Royals and Sunrisers Hyderabad respectively.
There was also speculation that head coach Darren Lehmann would step down, but he kept hold of his position as Sutherland said the board’s investigation concluded that he did not know about the plan to tamper with the ball.