Former Australia coach Mickey Arthur believes the ball-tampering scandal in South Africa was an inevitable result of an unwillingness to improve the culture in the country's entire cricket set-up.

The South African, now coach of Pakistan, was sacked by Australia in 2013 after a series of embarrassing standoffs with some of the test team over standards of professionalism on an ill-fated tour of India and leading up to an Ashes series.

"Unfortunately, it was always going to end like this," Arthur wrote on the PlayersVoice website of the incident in Cape Town that led to bans for captain Steve Smith, his deputy David Warner and opening batsman Cameron Bancroft.

"Despite generational change, independent reviews and too many behavioural spotfires to list, Cricket Australia and the national team had demonstrated no real willingness or desire to improve the culture within their organisation from season to season.