Ban over… Steve Smith, David Warner ready to rise and shine

TIL Desk Sports/ Steve Smith and David Warner may wake with some relief on Thursday as they greet the final day of their ball-tampering bans but the anniversary of their humiliation will otherwise be a sombre milestone for Australia’s cricket fans.

Much has changed since Cricket Australia slapped former captain Smith and his deputy Warner with 12-month suspensions for the Cape Town scandal, while giving Cameron Bancroft a lighter nine-month sentence as the rookie opener caught up in a plot driven by others.

Captains, coaches and a string of senior cricket executives have left or been sent packing, their replacements pledging to win back fans with fair play as much as series wins and silverware.

Bancroft, the man who hastily trousered a piece of sandpaper in the Newlands field to try to hide his team’s shame, has been named captain of English county side Durham, three months after fingering Warner as the ball-tampering mastermind in a TV interview in December.