PETER Siddle has thrown his weight against the growing number of calls to lift the ball-tampering bans of Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft.

The veteran paceman on Thursday said he believes the trio should serve the entirety of their bans. Smith and Warner have five months left, and Bancroft two.

Siddle is one of few players to go against the players’ union, the Australian Cricketers’ Association, who said on Tuesday it “will be relentless in pursuing” the immediate lifting of the suspensions.

“You always want to see them playing cricket but I think ... the punishments are there for a reason,” Siddle told reporters on Thursday.

“They understood the reasons why they got those punishments so I think ... it comes down to them, obviously, serving them out, copping the penalty that they got.

“And it’s very close to them being back. They’ve still been playing cricket around the world, staying fit and everything like that.”

Siddle said he believed the trio receiving their full punishments could be beneficial to the game in the future.

He added: “Like JL (Justin Langer) spoke about last night, hopefully it does clean up the game and make it for the good of the game.”

Among those to side with the ACA since the release of the Longstaff Review is former coach Darren Lehmann, while Andrew Symonds said it “wouldn’t bother” him if the bans were lifted.

But former Test batsman Simon Katich sided with CA, saying “no good” would come from allowing them to return to cricket at the highest level.

“I think the players should see out their bans ... They admitted what they did was wrong, and they blatantly cheated,” Katich told SEN.

South African legend Shaun Pollock is also in that camp, telling Wide World of Sports on Thursday that a “dangerous precedent” would be set by excusing the players from their full bans.

“If you lift the ban early and they return to international cricket, then you’ll always have players looking for loopholes in any rulings in the future,” he told the publication.

“It would set a dangerous precedent for any future Cricket Australia rulings to allow them back into international cricket any earlier than the original ban specified.”