Smith, Warner pay heavy price

The hammer has come down heavy on Australia's disgraced captain Steve Smith and vice-captain David Warner for their roles in the ball-tampering scandal as Cricket Australia (CA) yesterday banned both from top-level cricket for a year.

Both players have also been ejected from this year's Indian Premier League, losing contracts worth nearly 2 million dollars each.

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A statement from Cricket Australia (CA) said Smith and Warner had been suspended from "all international and domestic cricket" while opening batsman Cameron Bancroft has been banned for nine months over the ball-tampering incident during the third Test in South Africa.

All three players will also be required to undertake 100 hours of voluntary service in community cricket.

A Cricket Australia spokesman told AFP the players could still play at club level in Australia or in other countries.

Smith, Warner and Bancroft have been sent home from South Africa but coach Darren Lehmann remains in charge because CA says he was unaware of the plot to tamper with the ball.

The CA statement said Smith and Bancroft would not be considered for team leadership positions until a minimum of 12 months after the end of their suspensions, but Warner will be barred from such positions in the future.

Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland said the national body would provide details of an independent review "into the conduct and culture of our Australian men's team in due course."

Smith, Warner and Bancroft have been sent home from South Africa but coach Darren Lehmann remains in charge because Cricket Australia says he was unaware of the plot to tamper with the ball.

Sutherland said that Lehmann's furious walkie-talkie exchange with 12th man Peter Handscomb was the crucial evidence that distanced him from the team's ball-tampering plot.

Television footage showed Lehmann relaying a message down to Handscomb after cameras caught Bancroft attempting to alter the ball's condition with what Australian officials have said was sandpaper.

"I want to clarify that specific point. He sent a message to say 'what the hell is going on', except he didn't use the word 'hell'," Sutherland told reporters at the Australia team hotel in Johannesburg.

Smith said after the Test that the Australia team's "leadership group" had been aware of the plan. Former Australian captain Michael Clarke, the man Smith succeeded in 2015, believes there is more to the story than meets the eye.

Meanwhile, former Australia leg-spinner Shane Warne branded reaction to the Australian ball-tampering scandal a "tornado of hysteria" on Wednesday and said the punishments meted out to Smith and Warner do not fit the crime.

"We are all so hurt and angry and maybe we weren't so sure how to react," Warne wrote on Facebook. "We'd just never seen it before.

"But the jump to hysteria is something that has elevated the offence beyond what they actually did, and maybe we're at a point where the punishment just might not fit the crime."

"But what are the players guilty of? Cheating via ball-tampering and bringing the game into disrepute.

"Their opposing captain in this series, South Africa's Faf du Plessis, has been charged with the offence twice and opening bowler Vernon Philander once."