Tim Paine has accused South Africa of ball tampering in the Test match immediately after Australian cricket was rocked by the sandpaper-gate scandal, claiming the act was covered up by match broadcasters.

Paine made the explosive claims in his autobiography, The Price Paid, with the former Test captain becoming the first player to lift the lid on the 2018 Cape Town Test in a tell-all book.

Paine denies any suggestion of a team meeting around the plan for Cameron Bancroft to use sandpaper on the ball during the third Test of the series against South Africa.

And, he said, he was stunned and his heart sank as replays showed Bancroft hiding the sandpaper in his pants before being spoken to by umpires.

"I was thinking, 'What the f**k'," Paine wrote. "A sense of dread came over us all."

In a lengthy chapter on the 2018 tour, Paine was at pains to point out that ball tampering was commonplace in cricket and that it was the sport's dirty little secret.

However, he conceded using sandpaper was "next level" and "shameful", with traditional tampering usually via means such as throwing the ball into the ground.

Regardless, he says, he was left furious when he saw South Africa allegedly pulling apart the seam of the ball in the following Test.

"I saw it happen in the fourth Test of that series," Paine wrote.

"Think about that. After everything that had happened in Cape Town, after all the headlines and bans and carry on.

"I was standing at the bowlers' end in the next Test when a shot came up on the screen of a South African player at mid-off having a huge crack at the ball.