The Proteas remain focused on winning the World Cup amidst shock waves caused by Tim Paine and Faf du Plessis’ autobiographies earlier in the week. #T20WorldCup ✍️ @imongamagcwabe 

The can of worms has been opened by former Australian Test skipper, Tim Paine. Paine recently published an autobiography titled The price paid, A story of life, cricket and lessons learned in which he suggested that South Africa tampered with the ball in the fourth Test in 2018. 

“I saw it happen in the fourth Test of that series,” Paine wrote in his new autobiography.

“Think about that. After everything that had happened in Cape Town, after all the headlines and bans and carry on. I was standing at the bowlers’ end in the next Test when a shot came up on the screen of a South African player at mid-off having a huge crack at the ball.

“The television director, who had played an active role in catching out Cam, immediately pulled the shot off the screen. We went to the umpires about it, which might seem a bit poor, but we’d been slaughtered and were convinced they’d been up to it since the first Test. But the footage got lost. As it would,” Paine concluded.

This opened old wounds that both Australia and South Africa would rather keep in the past.

Asked whether he finds it strange that Paine’s book is making waves at a time where teams are focusing on a World Cup, Lungi Ngidi replied:

“I don’t find it strange because at some point it was going to be spoken about again,” he said. 

“We haven’t spoken about anything in terms of our team now. That’s something that guys are writing in their own books and I guess we’ll see it when we get a chance to read it. But for now our focus is here so we’re kind of brushing past those things,” Lungi Ngidi told the media on Wednesday.

“Now the guys are retiring, they’re writing books and they’re sharing their stories so it was bound to come back. It has come back at a time where there’s a lot of media around this tournament as well so it does highlight that sort of situation. In terms of distracting us, I don’t think it has at all. It has nothing to do with us right now. So we’re pretty chilled about that,” he concluded.

Another former skipper, this time South Africa’s Faf du Plessis, also has an autobiography that will be published on October 28.

The inserts of the book brought shock waves across South Africa, revealing what only a few could see from afar. The book touched on Darryn Cullinan’s rude and insensitive engagement with a young Faf at the Titans to Faf’s struggles to ‘connect’ with coach Mark Boucher. 

Clearly, the Proteas are focusing on the job at hand; winning a T20I World Cup for South Africa.

As reassuring as that is for the Proteas fans, Faf’s stories will still have to be considered post World Cup.  

Despite Boucher’s exit post World Cup, this will be a lesson to the next coach to be conscious that players retire, tell their side of the story and that nothing goes hidden forever.