Australian pacer Josh Hazlewood has lifted the lid on what made the Australians resort to tampering with the ball against South Africa in Cape Town. According to the pacer, the stress of a big tour such as the one in South Africa played a part in the way things went down.

He also stated that the team were only judged by what they did on the pitch and not how they behaved off the field, which, along with focusing solely on the results, added fuel to the fire that somewhat burned Australian cricket.

"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.

"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.”

Ever since the appointment of Justin Langer, however, some ethos have been echoed by the former Australia left-handed opener: to behave properly even off the field and try to restore the image that has been lost. And Hazlewood concurs.

"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."

Reminiscing about the incident, Hazlewood revealed that the team didn’t realize how big the matter became back home in Australia until they woke up in the morning and read the news – something that surprised right-handed pacer.

"We went to bed that night and Australia hadn't woken up yet, when it hit back in Australia and we woke up it was quite surprising how big a reaction it was," he said. "It wasn't massive in South Africa, all the Australian writers know it's going on here and there and around different teams and people have been done in the past, I guess they talked it down a bit if anything but once it hit home the media went the other way and the reaction was massive."