YDNEY (Reuters) - Australia's embarrassment over the ball-tampering scandal showed little

sign of easing on Wednesday even as former captain Steve Smith, vice captain David Warner
and batsman Cameron Bancroft headed home in disgrace from South Africa.

The trio, stripped of their positions, will discover the full extent of their punishment in the
next "24 hours" with Cricket Australia chief James Sutherland promising "significant
sanctions" at a news conference in Johannesburg.

Sutherland and his governing body, under pressure from sponsors and in the midst of
negotiations over a new broadcast deal, know they have plenty of work to do over the
coming months to restore the image of the sport in Australia.

The chief executive's decision in his news conference to studiously avoid using the word
"cheating" to describe the conspiracy to scuff up one side of the ball with gritty tape would
appear to have been an early false step on his part.

Social media slammed him for his equivocation and Australia's Foreign Minister Julie Bishop,
one of series of politicians up to and including the Prime Minister to have commented on
the matter, showed no such reticence.

"Of course it was cheating," she told reporters in Canberra. "Any act to gain an unfair
advantage acting illegally in sport is cheating."

Cricket is Australia's one genuinely national sport and the disgust at the incident has played
out in the media, social and traditional, for the last four days.

The two biggest previous assaults on the integrity of the game in the country were England's
'bodyline' tour of the 1930s, when Australia were the victims, and the "underarm bowling"
scandal of 1981.