Flintoff's warning for ball-tampering critics

Former England captain Andrew Flintoff has warned ex-teammates to be careful in their criticism of Australia's ball tampering, conceding his team had "done a few things which aren't particularly in the rules".

Australians Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft were punished by the ICC for their roles in in the ball-tampering scandal in Cape Town last month, while that duo as well as David Warner were handed significant bans by Cricket Australia for their conduct. Warner and Smith were banned by CA for 12 months, while Bancroft's suspension lasts nine months. All three players accepted their sanctions without appeal.

When asked if he considered the punishments fair, Flintoff said on his BBC Radio program: "No – I think the crime doesn't warrant that.

"One of the things which has really annoyed me is that I've seen people raising their profile on the back of other people's misery," he continued.

"I've seen people I've played with, who have been good to me; I have seen them change in the space of two seconds.

"All of a sudden (they say) 'Let's call for their head, this is disgusting, this is disgraceful'.

"Some of them are in glass houses. Don't be chucking your stones, lads.

"We've done a few things which aren't particularly in the rules – not as bad as that – and it changes.

"Then I saw Steve Smith on TV crying his eyes out, so upset, and I put a tweet out saying: 'Are you happy now? Is that what you wanted?'"

Flintoff did not expand on what activities that "aren't particularly in the rules" he was referring to but former teammate and England opener Marcus Trescothick has previously revealed he used mints to shine the ball throughout the 2001 and 2005 Ashes series.

"I was firmly established as the man in charge of looking after the ball when we were fielding. It was my job to keep the shine on the new ball for as long as possible with a bit of spit and a lot of polish," Trescothick wrote in his autobiography Coming Back To Me.

"Through trial and error I finally settled on the best type of spit for the task at hand.

"It had been common knowledge in county cricket for some time that certain sweets produced saliva which, when applied to the ball for cleaning purposes, enabled it to keep its shine for longer and therefore its swing."

Trescothick wrote how during the Headingley Test of the 2001 series he had nearly been caught.

"As I dived to gather the ball at square leg, I landed on my side and a shower of Murray Mints spewed out of my trouser pocket all over the grass right in front of the umpire," the batsman wrote.

"Fortunately, neither he nor the two batsmen seemed to take much notice as I scrambled around on all fours trying desperately to gather in the sweets before they started asking awkward questions."

South Africa skipper Faf du Plessis was fined 100 per cent of his match fee for using a mint to alter the condition of the ball during the 2016 Hobart Test, his second sanction from the ICC for a ball tampering charge.

Flintoff added he was sceptical that other players in the Australian team would not have known the ball was altered.

"I am struggling to think that not everyone (in the team) knew," Flintoff said. "I might be completely wrong but you talk about it, you talk about how you're going to treat the ball. The ball in cricket is so important.

"To say that a bowler has got a ball in his hands, or anybody else in the field does not know that this ball has been tampered with is absolute nonsense.