Test cricket's biggest scandals - your result revealed

On Friday, Australia will play their first Test in South Africa since the sandpapergate scandal rocked the cricketing world eight years ago.

To mark one of the biggest controversies the game has ever seen, Test Match Special asked you which is Test cricket's biggest scandal.

Ten of the most notorious scandals in Test cricket were picked out by a TMS panel and readers of the BBC Sport website then ranked them.

The results have been revealed on the TMS podcast by BBC chief cricket commentator Jonathan Agnew, former England fast bowler Steven Finn and TMS scorer Andy Zaltzman.

The full results are below and you can listen to the podcast here.

Pakistan had already lost the series in England in 2006, yet were cruising to victory in the final Test at The Oval. However, Australian umpire Darrel Hair asked for the ball to be changed midway through the afternoon session on the fourth day. Ball-tampering was suggested and Pakistan refused to play after tea. The match was abandoned and years later awarded to England, after some back and forth.

Agnew: "Pakistan weren't accused of ball-tampering, they were found guilty of ball-tampering, on the field, without any opportunity to defend themselves. The rule at the time was if the umpire on the field suspected ball-tampering, the ball was changed and penalty runs were awarded. It didn't feel fair."

Zaltzman: "It ended up with England awarded the Test so therefore they won the series 3-0. It means that whenever we look at the biggest first-innings deficit overturned to win a Test, this game comes out on top - 331 runs. It irritates me slightly."

England's Test match against Pakistan in 1987 was stopped mid-game for more than 24 hours when the tourists' skipper Mike Gatting became embroiled in a row with home umpire Shakoor Rana.

Agnew: "I'm a bit surprised this is so low. The knock-on was England didn't tour Pakistan for many years. England felt they were being stitched up by Pakistani umpires. There was a total lack of trust, going both ways, between England and Pakistan for a very long time."

Zaltzman: "This was before neutral umpires and there was a sense umpiring wasn't quite as fair as it could have been, which all exploded in that moment."

Finn: "It blows my mind that there weren't neutral umpires. My first summer of Test cricket had DRS and neutral umpires."

The third Test in the 1975 Ashes was abandoned when the pitch was vandalised overnight by supporters of George Davis, who had been jailed for armed robbery the previous year. "George Davis is innocent" was written on the wall around Headingley.

Finn: "I can't fathom turning up to a Test match and the pitch - the most sacred, untouchable of places - it's staggering that people managed to do that."

Zaltzman: "It highlights how vulnerable cricket is to this sort of thing. A small bit of the field is damaged and the whole game has to be abandoned."

Agnew: "There was no security. These days, the grounds are locked down. It was set up for an England win, but could have been a really good game of cricket. It's a bizarre story."

When Australia's richest man, Kerry Packer, failed to boost the ratings of his Channel Nine TV network with live cricket, he created his own product: World Series Cricket. The plan was simple - Packer recruited the best players in the world to stage his own matches.

Agnew: "Virtually everything you see about modern cricket can be traced back to World Series. It was incredible, innovative and exciting. I was 18 years old, playing club cricket in Melbourne and captivated by the coverage."

Finn: "There's a similar revolution going on at the moment with T20 leagues allowing players to drift away from Test cricket. The temptation to be involved in something new and exciting would have been very interesting."

Zaltzman: "It was extremely high-calibre cricket, but not even counted in first-class statistics, let alone Test stats. I don't really see it as a scandal at all, it was more cricket growing up. This really modernised the sport."

In the 1994 Lord's Test against South Africa, Michael Atherton was caught by TV cameras rubbing dirt on the ball. Atherton's explanation was that he was trying to maintain the condition of the ball, rather than alter it. Trouble was, he told the match referee he was using the dirt to keep his hands dry.

Agnew: "This was a really tough time. I've thought about this a lot over the years and I'm not sure Michael knew the rules at the time - cricketers often don't. It's OK to rub your hand in the dirt, but you can't put soil on to the ball. It was a huge story. It was everywhere."

Our top five kicks off with the Pakistan spot-fixing scandal of 2010, when no-balls deliberately bowled in the Lord's Test ultimately resulted in three of the tourists' players - team captain Salman Butt and fast bowlers Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir - spending time in jail.

Finn: "This was my first summer of Test cricket. It was such a weird atmosphere. We were warming up, looked up to the Pakistan dressing room and there were two officials in suits and blazers reading the News of the World. That was the day we went on to win the game. We didn't celebrate any of the wickets because of what transpired."

Zaltzman: "Amir had burst on to the scene as a teenager - he'd only bowled three no-balls in his previous five Tests. As a cricket fan, one of the deep sadnesses was Amir was one of the best talents to have emerged in years. It was an individual tragedy. A young player had been led astray."

The Australians feature again here, but this time the guilty party was England, who developed a plan of intimidatory fast bowling aimed at the bodies of the hosts' batters in the 1932-33 Ashes series.

Agnew: "For me, this would be bottom. It was an entirely legitimate ploy. They call us whingeing Poms, but the Australians were pretty good at whingeing about the way [Harold] Larwood was bowling."

Finn: "Cricket is a game of small margins. You use the laws and the bandwidth within those laws. Play on, I say."

The most recent of the scandals in our list is Sandpapergate, when Australia's cricketers were found to have used sandpaper to alter the condition of the ball during their Test match against South Africa in Cape Town.

Finn: "I was completely and utterly baffled and shocked that someone thought this was a good idea and they would get away with it. There are so many cameras and you are so acutely aware when you are playing that those cameras have the ability to zoom in. To think you'd be able to pull sandpaper out of your pocket, rub it on the ball and then hide it down your pants is completely unfathomable. I was shocked they had taken altering the state of the ball to that kind of level."

Agnew: "If you're a bowler you want to control what's happening with the ball and you'll see if something has gone on with it. For me, there are some unanswered questions. It was one of the most stupid things ever seen on a cricket field."

A close second in our vote was the Basil D'Oliveira affair of 1968, when England's tour of South Africa was called off over the inclusion in their squad of mixed-race all-rounder D'Oliveira. At the time, South Africa was operating under a system of racial segregation known as apartheid.

Agnew: "You can actually trace this affair all the way up to the birth of a new nation. When you unpick it, look at the consequences, it was eventually the birth of a new South Africa. For me, this would be number one."

Zaltzman: "There's still a lot that is not known about the decision to not pick D'Oliveira in the original England squad. There had been pressure put on him by the English cricketing establishment - the establishment came out very badly from that. It had a huge impact on the world and the gradual dismantling of apartheid."

Top of the list is former South Africa captain Hansie Cronje, who admitted to match-fixing having become involved with Indian bookmakers. Cronje's most infamous plot came in a dead-rubber fifth Test against England at Centurion Park in 2000. The match had been badly affected by rain, but Cronje was adamant the teams should do all they could to ensure it did not end in a draw.

He negotiated with England skipper Nasser Hussain for both teams to forfeit an innings, leaving the tourists with a final-day run-chase, which they completed. England were unaware, but Cronje had engineered a result.

Agnew: "This was unbelievable. It came to light by accident. The Delhi police were trying to tap a phone of a bookmaker and accidentally tapped the phone of Hansie Cronje. Thank goodness they did because hopefully it is now much more difficult for a player to manipulate games of cricket."

Zaltzman: "At the time, we all thought it was good. Cronje's generous deal made a contest on the final day of a dead rubber. Until the true story came out, we didn't realise what had gone was criminal. The shock of the story merits its place in this countdown."

Finn: "A lot of these things have been the catalyst for necessary change in cricket and this was the biggest one."