Josh Hazlewood reveals the actual motives behind ball-tampering in South Africa

Although Josh Hazlewood wasn’t an integral part of the Australian ‘leadership team’ that was involved in the infamous ball-tampering scandal, he is certainly one of those implicated in the ordeal. The saga eventually saw Steve Smith and his deputy David Warner ousted from the team for a period of one year.

While the ban has left it’s mark on the Aussies, something that has seen them slump to the sixth place in the ICC ODI rankings, Josh Hazlewood has come out and stated the reasons behind the motive for the tampering incident. Speaking about the same, the pacer stated that big tours of countries in a competitve nature was something that involved a lot of stress for most players.

“It’s a big tour always South Africa, coming off the back of an Ashes as well which was quite stressful,” Hazlewood told News Corp. “All big tours are stressful and that added pressure we probably put on ourselves as much as anyone to win.

‘Focus on results drives people to do different things’

Prior to the start of the South African tour, the Australains had whipped the Brits in the Ashes and with the South African tour, Smith’s side were quite keen on winning. And they would go to any measure and any extent to do.

“Where the stress has come from is that we are pretty much measured on our cricket ability, not as people off the field, which we had probably got away from in the past six months, 12 months. A focus only on results I guess drives people to do different things and we are only measured on our cricket success,” Hazlewood conceded. “I don’t think that’s how it is now, I think that’s changed a little bit, JL has talked a lot about how we are behaving off the field and we are going to be measured on that as well which is a good sign.”

“Cricket-wise I think he was ready, he probably wasn’t ready with everything that came with it I guess,” Hazlewood noted. “It’s a different time now where we’re basically cricketers from the time we leave school and we don’t really experience life outside of cricket and the cricket environment, back in those times they probably got out in the world, had a few jobs, learned a lot of life lessons. Now you go straight from school into a cricket environment and cricket is all you know.”

[interaction id=”5b27a9df42cbb745671a7b23″]

Stay updated on ‘today’s cricket news‘ with CricTracker.com.