^^^^^ The "so called ball tampering" was not noticed by the umpires. It was the South African ex-player Fanie De Villiers who first noticed it and went ballistic during the live coverage.

I never said that what they did was the right thing. My only complaint was about the quantum of punishment. I felt that it was excessive and was influenced by the South African media's witch hunt against Smith and Warner.

I had pointed out one very important thing in the past. Many of the legendary pace bowlers had previously admitted that they used to tamper the original condition of the ball, using Vaseline, sweat, towels.etc. The so called "banana swing" was achieved by roughening one side of the ball by erasing it with a rough towel and then applying sweat or saliva on it (thereby increasing the weight of that half).

This has been going on for many decades and very few of the bowlers got punished for that. Smith and Warner went a step further and used sand paper (instead of towel). But the ICC laws don't differentiate between a towel and sand paper.

My questions are:

1. Why players using sand paper are banned, while those using towels are not punished at all?
2. Why three Australian batsmen were banned for ball tampering, when they didn't bowled a single ball during the entire innings? Are you saying that these three players are more guilty when compared to the bowlers who delivered those balls?