It's part of the game: Mahmud

Two days after the incident, the ball-tampering scandal involving the Australian cricket team in South Africa was still the centre of all discussions surrounding cricket yesterday. On Saturday, Australia youngster Cameron Bancroft was caught on camera using a sticky tape on the ball on the third day of the third Test, and later the same day captain Steve Smith confessed that it was a concerted ploy initiated by the leadership group.

Thousands of miles away from Cape Town, at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium in Mirpur yesterday, the Independence Day exhibition cricket match took place with former Bangladesh players playing against each other, and there too ball-tampering was the buzzword amid all the fun and joyous moments.

According to former captain and Bangladesh team manager Khaled Mahmud, ball tampering has been a regular feature from Pakistani players whenever they came to play in the Dhaka leagues.

"We have always played fair cricket and to be honest we don't have any specialist for this [ball tampering]. Many Pakistani players used to come to Bangladesh to play in the leagues and it [ball tampering] used to happen quite often and there were many complaints. If you go through history you will see that a bowler gave away 40 runs from his first five overs but later went on to pick five wickets for just five runs.

"That's because the ball started to reverse and it happened whenever the Pakistani players were here. We accepted, thinking that they knew the art but what happened this time [in South Africa] is truly disappointing. Why would such a big team do this? If the minnows or we [Bangladesh] had done it I don't know what would happen. But I have never seen any Bangladeshi player doing this," Mahmud told reporters yesterday.

When asked whether ball tampering exists in the Dhaka Premier League (DPL), Mahmud said that although it is difficult to do it in the DPL due to there being fewer foreign players allowed in the playing eleven nowadays but he did not deny its existence in the Bangladesh Premier League T20 league.

"Whoever does this, they do it very tactfully and we might not be able to catch it but that's not fair. However, many legendary cricketers have done it in the past so it has become a part of cricket these days," he added.

On the other hand another former captain and national selector Habibul Bashar informed that there have been a few issues of ball tampering in the first-class league in the past.

"Our boys are not habituated to this. There was a time when we used to see such things during the first-class leagues but that was nothing significant -- they used petroleum jelly or Vaseline to shine one part of the ball," Bashar said.

Tigers fast bowler Taskin Ahmed also chimed in. "It's against the spirit of the game and we don't expect anything like this from a side like Australia and the youngsters should stay away from such things."