Nearly three months after the ball-tampering scandal, Australia seamer Mitchell Starc opened up about his disgust with the way Steve Smith handled the press conference in the wake of the controversy.

Speaking at a ‘Women in Banking and Finance’ forum in Sydney, where corporate adviser Sue Cato warned of the dangers of ill-advised and ill-prepared press conferences, Starc questioned the approach of the former Australia captain and Cameron Bancroft when the duo held the press conference following the ball-tampering incident.

“Going back to what Sue said before about being upfront and tackling a problem head on, that's something the group who decided to go into a press conference didn't really think about,” Starc said.

“They obviously didn't see how big the reaction was going to be at that time and then went down the path of not telling the whole truth and then I guess involving another group, which ruined - well, not ruined - but affected other reputations.”

In that conference, Smith had said that the “leadership group” decided to tamper with the ball, but later it became clear that David Warner was the mastermind and the only third guy involved in the incident and none of Nathan Lyon, Josh Hazlewood, and Starc – who also belonged to the group mentioned by Smith – were aware of the happenings.

The disgraceful trio that was involved in the incident were subsequently handed over heavy sanctions by Cricket Australia.

Josh Hazlewood, on the other hand, has a rather considerate take on the matter. He feels sympathetic towards Smith, who had to suffer the burden of the shameful occurrence.

“It was pretty emotional afterwards, probably more so the next morning after the news hit Australia and we woke up in South Africa. Obviously, Steve and Dave stepped down that morning. It was tough to be out there actually,” he said.