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Best of 2018: Controversies that rocked sports world | More sports

The year that’s going by had its share of moments and incidents which made news for all the wrong reasons. Times Sport takes a brief look at those events.

SANDPAPERGATE

Cameron Bancroft stuffing yellow sandpaper in his underpants will go down among the most bizarre of scenes witnessed anywhere in the world of sport. Who stuffs sandpaper inside underpants? And that too bright yellow in colour, the sort that can’t be missed. Australia paid a heavy penalty as Bancroft’s not-so-secret act, apparently at David Warner’s behest and with tacit understanding of Steve Smith, had the entire team in the dock. Allegations of ball-tampering, not new to Test cricket, surfaced yet again and with it came a storm that blew away Australia’s selfstyled cultural superiority that other cricket teams have tried copying over the years. Cricket Australia, left shame-faced in the aftermath, banned Smith and Warner for a year and Bancroft for nine months and made way for a flurry of changes in their administration.

MITHALI-POWAR SPAT

If women’s cricket ever hoped to make the headlines on the front pages of newspaper, 2018 turned out to be that year, albeit for all the wrong reasons. A spat between India’s senior-most woman cricketer Mithali Raj and interim coach Ramesh Powar — one that took place in the Caribbean in November, when India participated in the World T20 — took women’s cricket by a storm when letters written by these two individuals to the BCCI got leaked to the media and all hell broke loose. Matters didn’t end with the leaking of letters. The fight between Mithali and Powar even left the members of the Supreme Courtappointed Committee of Administrators (CoA) divided with Vinod Rai and Diana Edulji falling out with each other and making public statements of disagreement over Mithali’s allegations and the eventual sidelining of Powar. Rai appointed a fresh ad-hoc committee, disputed by Edulji, to pick a new coach and it settled for former batsman WV Raman to take over.

JOHRI FACES HEAT

The BCCI CEO has stayed in the news for over a good two years now, thanks to the Supreme Court handing him unprecedented powers (powers had earlier predominantly rested with elected members) to run day-to-day affairs in the game. But news never got Johri’s goat the way it did in October this year, when a tweet – later deleted – made unsubstantiated allegations of sexual harassment against the 52-year-old. Two more allegations of similar nature soon cropped up. An independent inquiry was called upon and a three-member committee of accomplished individuals investigated the allegations, eventually reaching the conclusion that the CEO wasn’t guilty. For all the bitterness these sequence of events threw up, they left Indian cricket administration divided and in tatters.

SHAMI’S MARITAL WOES

The year turned out to be a tumultuous one for Team India pacer Mohammed Shami . He found himself in news when his estranged wife Hasin Jahan came up with a flurry of allegations – ranging from infidelity, corruption and domestic violence – and filed a police complaint in Kolkata under various sections of the IPC. The BCCI, in the meantime, instructed its Anti-Corruption Unit to look into allegations of corruption and put the bowler’s central contract on hold. The pacer had to sweat it out, both legally and cricket-wise to hold his ground against Jahan, claim the legal and higher moral ground, and join the team on the tour of England. It was a year Shami will not forget in a hurry.

SERENA STEALS OSAKA’S LIMELIGHT

Serena Williams’ reputation as someone who accepts losses graciously got a dent after she lost to Japan’s Naomi Osaka in the US Open final. It was supposed to be the Japanese youngster’s crowning moment of glory, but Serena’s heated argument with chair umpire Carlos Ramos became the talking point of the contest. The 23-time Grand Slam winner was seen seeking guidance from her coach Patrick Mouratoglou. She was given a code violation for ‘off-court coaching’ and was also docked a point for breaking her racquet. Serena went on to accuse chair umpire Ramos of being a ‘thief’ and sexist.

RONALDO’S RAPE CHARGE

Cristiano Ronaldo’s move from Spain to Italy was the most talked about transfer news in the summer as he switched loyalties from Real Madrid to Juventus. However, even before he landed in Turin, the Portuguese superstar got embroiled in sexual assault charges. He was accused by a former model of attacking and raping her in his Las Vegas hotel penthouse suite in 2009. Kathryn Mayorga, 34, accused Ronaldo in a 32-page complaint filed with a district court in Nevada. Ronaldo vehemently denied the rape accusations.

BOXING IN DANGER OF BEING PUNCHED OUT AT OLYMPICS

Boxing is in danger of being expelled from the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Reason: In October, AIBA, the governing body for boxing, elected Gafur Rakhimov, a man the US Treasury Department has described as “one of Uzbekistan’s leading criminals” as its president. A month later, it emerged that the International Olympic Committee is contemplating expelling boxing’s international federation from Tokyo.

MOURINHO-POGBA FALLOUT

Jose Mourinho signed Paul Pogba for Manchester United for a then-world record fee of £89m in August 2016, but the pair had a fractious relationship before the Portuguese’s sacking in December. Mourinho had accused Pogba of lack of respect for his teammates and the club’s fans with the nature of his performance in a Premier League game. In a post-match dressing down delivered in front of the entire team, Mourinho is reported to have called Pogba “a virus”. Pogba, reportedly, was admonished with the words: “You don’t play. You don’t respect players and supporters. And you kill the mentality of the good honest people around you.” Pogba’s conduct after Mourinho’s sacking was questioned in the media by Gary Neville, who accused him of “dancing on the manager’s grave” following a social media post showing the midfielder smirking once the news broke. Pogba, however, closed the chapter by praising Mourinho after the coach’s departure.

WHEN HEGERBERG WAS ASKED TO TWERK

Moments after Norwegian soccer star Ada Hegerberg was honored in Paris as the first female winner of the Ballon d’Or — a major soccer award — Martin Solveig, a co-host of the ceremony asked Hegerberg if she knew how to twerk. Hegerberg, 23, responded with a “no” while looking uncomfortable onstage. The awkward exchange led to backlash on social media and an apology from Solveig. Hegerberg — who ended up dancing with Solveig, a French DJ, to a Frank Sinatra song for a few seconds — said after the ceremony that Solveig “came to me after and was really sad that it went that way. I didn’t think about it at that moment. I didn’t consider it as sexual harassment or anything.”

DOPE GHOST CONTINUES TO HAUNT INDIAN SPORT

The ghost of doping continued to haunt India sport this year too. In May, two-time Commonwealth Games champion, weightlifter Sanjita Chanu, tested positive for a banned anabolic steroid and was provisionally suspended by the international federation. The International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) said that Sanjita, who had won gold in the women’s 53kg category in the Gold Coast CWG, has tested positive for testosterone. Chanu was provisionally suspended by the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF). The case took a dramatic turn when the IWF admitted to committing a mistake in giving the exact sample number of Sanjita in its report of her failed dope test. This prompted the embattled weightlifter to demand an inquiry. It got uglier when it emerged that Nirmala Sheoran, one of India’s top women 400m runners, tested positive for a banned substance. To India’s embarrassment, the result came after Sheoran’s sample was retested in the WADA-accredited laboratory in Montreal after it showed negative in (NDTL) in the Capital.

SYRINGE TROUBLE FOR INDIA AT COMMONWEALTH GAMES

Soon after landing in Gold Coast for the Commonwealth Games in April, the Indian contingent got into trouble amid speculation that syringes were found in rooms of Indian boxers – a violation of the event’s ‘no needle policy’. Of course, there was no dope-related embarrassment. Subsequently, the Commonwealth Games Federation summoned an unidentified national association, believed to be India, for a meeting with its medical commission. Later, in what was a massive reprieve to the Indian contingent, the doctor of the country’s boxing team was let off with a reprimand as he was found guilty of not disposing needles safely after injecting vitamins to a fatigued boxer.