De Villiers keeps ball-tampering debate going

Cape Town: The simmering hostility between the South Africa and England teams is likely to become more marked after another day of angry exchanges over England's supposed ball-tampering.

South Africa's cricketers are continuing to make an issue of the television footage, even though the match officials announced yesterday that they could see no evidence of wrongdoing.

Speaking to the media last night, middle-order batsman AB de Villiers insisted that "it is not on to climb on to the ball with your spikes".

This is what Stuart Broad was filmed doing on Tuesday morning.

"It was a little bit naughty," De Villiers added. "Although I wouldn't say that he deserves to be banned, I do think it should be looked at."

De Villiers' frustration stands at odds with South Africa's decision not to file a written complaint.

Decision

According to Dr Mohammad Moosajee, South Africa's team manager, they took advice from match officials before deciding to let the matter drop. "There was a concern raised about the condition of the ball," Moosajee explained last night.

"If you looked at TV footage you could clearly see that there was an indentation on the ball, and there were marks that went across. It was taken up to the match referee, Roshan Mahanama, who then looked into the matter and said he was quite happy that no further action needed to be taken. And we accepted that."

According to a statement released yesterday from the International Cricket Council's headquarters in Dubai, South Africa's failure to put in an official charge by the start of yesterday's play meant that the issue was closed.

But De Villiers clearly disagrees with team policy.

"I think there should be a formal complaint over a ball that was reversing after that incident," he said. "There was clearly a piece of the leather off the ball after he stepped on it and it is not the first time that it happened."

According to De Villiers, South Africa have been concerned about this issue since the Durban Test. But other sources say that England have been reversing the ball as early as the 15th over since the first match at Centurion.

Malpractice

In this atmosphere of claim and counter-claim, it has even been suggested that the television broadcasters, Supersport, were tipped the wink to go looking for malpractice on the part of England's bowlers.

This was denied yesterday by Alvin Naicker, the director, who insisted that he had had no contact with the South African camp.

Meanwhile, England opener Alastair Cook defended his team's conduct in this Test. "We're 100 per cent confident in our camp that we've done nothing wrong and that's been proven."