Cricket Australia indirectly might have pushed under-pressure players to ball tampering? Steve Smith reveals more

Adam Gilchrist did two or the biggest interviews that disclosed more information in regards to the unfortunate ball tampering incident that had ripped apart Australian cricket's image and handed three cricketers - David Warner, Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft - with bans from international and state cricket. 

The Day one of the Boxing Day Test between India and Australia on Wednesday suddenly shifted attention to Bancroft's interview with former cricketer and Fox Cricket host Gilchrist where the 25-year-old revealed that Warner was the mastermind behind the ball tampering incident. 

Meanwhile, in another interview, Gilchrist spoke to Smith, who not only was slapped with a year's ban but also lost his captaincy as a result of the ball-tampering scandal. Smith, who earlier spoke to media, once again repeated himself as he confessed that he had discovered the plan when he overheard a conversation in the team’s dressing room at Newlands but unfortunately, he didn't make an effort to stop it that eventually turned out to be a massive failure of his leadership.

However, when Gilchrist asked Smith about a moment he could think of that could have started to go off track to allow that [ball tampering] to happen, Smith spoke about Australia's loss to South Africa in Hobart. It was Australia's fourth consecutive loss in Test cricket and angry James Sutherland and Pat Howard barged into the dressing room and said, "we don't pay you to play, we pay you to win," and this statement probably would have not done well to Smith and his deputy. 

"I think back to Hobart when we lost there against South Africa (November 2016) and it was our fifth straight lost in Test cricket I think after three Tests in Sri Lanka and I remember James Sutherland and Pat Howard coming into the rooms there and actually saying 'we don't pay you to play, we pay you to win.' So, for me, that was I think a little bit disappointing to say. We don't go out there to try and lose games of cricket, we go out there to try and win and play the best way we can. 

If you're talking about cultures and stuff, you only have to look back a couple of months before South Africa and we won an Ashes series here in Australia 4-0 and people are saying the culture's really good and everything's good. So, you know, things can change really quickly. Obviously, events that happened in Cape Town make people say that the culture was really bad. People will have their own opinions on that. Personally, I don't think it was a bad culture," the former skipper said. 

Earlier, it was known that Cricket Australia are having discussions about Warner and Smith's return aiming March's limited-overs series against Pakistan.