According to the man who helped catch them, it was blind luck. Sandpapergate, the scandal that engulfed Australia eight years ago, was blatant cheating played out in real time on live television to a global audience.
"The way the Australians were caught was an absolute fluke," Alvin Naicker, in charge of Super Sport's live broadcast from Newlands, tells BBC Sport. Not just one fluke, but a series of them. That the "leadership group" of the Australian team hatched their plan during the lunch break on that Saturday afternoon in March 2018; that an alert camera operator lingered on Cameron Bancroft when others would have turned their attention elsewhere.
"The ball went to the wicketkeeper, then to Bancroft and he was shining the ball," says Naicker. "First it was on his pants, then the next ball, the cameraman happened to stay on Bancroft because he was not shining the ball on his pants, but he was rubbing the ball on his palm. When he threw the ball on, he put his hand in his pocket. The cameraman zoomed into his pocket. The slow-mo operator looked at it, spooled it back and forth, then zoomed in and could see the yellow spot."
Source: BBC Sport · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing