Steve Smith has finally spoken of the moment he learned of plans to tamper with the ball in the ill-fated Cape Town Test in March.

“I had the opportunity to stop it at that point, rather than say, ‘I don’t want to know anything about it’,” Smith said on Friday at an unusual press conference.

It was his first public discussion of the cheating scandal that cost him his Test captaincy as well as his place in the Australian cricket team.

“I walked past something and had the opportunity to stop it, and I didn’t do it. And that was my leadership failure, you know?” Smith admitted.

“It was the potential for something to happen, and it went on and happened out in the field.”

In the fallout from ‘Sandpapergate’, Smith was banned from playing international and domestic cricket for 12 months, and ordered to do 100 hours of voluntary service in community cricket.

Teammate David Warner, who instructed Cameron Bancroft to rough up the ball with sandpaper, was also banned for a year. Bancroft was banned for nine months.

Smith has this week taken the first steps back to a cricket career, even though his ban does not end until March 1, 2019.

He spoke to the media on Friday after training with BBL team Sydney Sixers. The media conference was supposed to coincide with a Vodafone commercial and working with mental health charity Gotcha4Life, he said – but the ad went to air early, on Sunday night.

It features footage from Smith’s media conference on his return to Australia after the Cape Town disgrace – when he wept and struggled for composure, his father by his side.

“The ad wasn’t supposed to have gone out until after I spoke to you today, actually,” he said on Friday.

“They liked it so much that they wanted to launch the campaign with it.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkC46v_0nb0

On Friday, Smith said as far as he was concerned, the incident in the South African Test was the first time ball-tampering had happened.

“I know that in any game that you play, you want the ball to try to move at some point in the game. But obviously you want to do it in a legal way and allow it to play its course that way, I guess,” he said.

Smith acknowledged he had the chance to stop the ball-tampering plan.

“That’s something I’ve learned over the past nine months: That every decision you make can have a negative outlook.

“If things go pear-shaped, what’s it gonna look like? If things go well, how does that look?” he said.

“Now it’s about learning and almost slowing your thinking down and ensuring that you make the right decisions more often than not.”

Smith admitted on Friday that he had endured “tough days” in the past nine months. But he said he had a strong support group to help him through “difficult times”.

Amid rumours he and former teammate Warner have fallen out, Smith offered just one line: “No, no. David and I are fine”.

Smith will spend the summer preparing for the World Cup and the Ashes, and possibly the Pakistan League and the IPL.

He said he expected a hostile reception from the England team if he was chosen to play for Australia in the World Cup and Ashes series.