The reputational cost of cricket’s most damaging ball-tampering scandal, and its toll on the commercial and competitive standing of Australian cricket, is back in the spotlight after Usman Khawaja claimed the entire Australia team knew about the use of sandpaper during the 2018 series against South Africa.
In extracts of his autobiography, Sabr, published in the Sydney Morning Herald, the former opening batter said Australia had used the tactic in the Test before the infamous match at Cape Town, where the scheme was exposed.
Additional reference context is available at https://www.bbc.com/sport/cricket/articles/cjdx33kyzk3lo.
The episode, nicknamed “sandpapergate”, led to bans for captain Steve Smith, vice-captain David Warner and fellow batter Cameron Bancroft, and triggered a formal investigation by Cricket Australia, the sport’s governing body and commercial custodian in the country.
“It was all of us. Not the batters, not the bowlers, not the staff. All of us,” Khawaja, 39, told the newspaper.
The claim directly challenges the position of the four Australia bowlers who played in that match, including current Test captain Pat Cummins. In 2021, Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon issued a joint statement saying they “did not know a foreign substance was taken on to the field”.
Khawaja, who scored 6,229 runs in 88 Tests, said discussions about tampering began during the second Test at Port Elizabeth, now Gqeberha. He described what he called the “discovery of sandpaper as an effective agent” after “open” discussions in the dressing room at St George’s Park. “At this point Smith essentially threw his hands in the air and said he didn’t want to know,” Khawaja wrote.
Australia were exposed in the third Test when television cameras showed Bancroft using sandpaper on the ball to help generate reverse swing.
Khawaja also said he was surprised not to be asked to provide any evidence during Cricket Australia’s investigation, an omission he suggested has left the underlying question unresolved. “In an ideal world, I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be the one who comes out and talks about the truth,” he said. “The issue is that I genuinely thought after eight years the truth would have been out by now.”
A central tension remains in the record. While Smith, Warner and Bancroft, all batters, were punished, there was never an explanation of how the bowlers did not notice a change in the state of the ball. In a 2021 interview with the Guardian, Bancroft was asked if the bowlers knew and replied: “It’s pretty probably self-explanatory.”
Days later, the quartet released their statement. “We did not know a foreign substance was taken on to the field to alter the condition of the ball until we saw the images on the big screen at Newlands,” they said. They pointed to the match umpires, Nigel Llong and Richard Illingworth, who inspected the ball after the images surfaced and did not change it because there was no sign of damage. “We respectfully request an end to the rumour-mongering and innuendo. It has gone on too long and it is time to move on,” the statement added.
By contrast, Cummins, 33, has sought to close the chapter. Speaking before Australia’s recent Test series in South Africa, which the Proteas won 2-1, he said he had spoken to Khawaja about the book’s publication. He said he had no concerns about potential revelations and felt it was “all dealt with then” and the team had “moved on”. “He didn’t go into too much detail, just basically gave me the heads-up that he is doing a book and, as always, no worries,” Cummins said on 8 October. “Tell your story. It’s fine. It’s obviously a long time ago and all the investigations, everything was done back then and we answered every question a million times.”
Khawaja said he had consistently argued the team should take responsibility together, including in the dressing room after the Cape Town Test. “I said: ‘Take this as a team. We did this as a team. We knew what was going on, and we have to take it as a team’. Obviously, it didn’t work that way, and those three guys got crucified,” he wrote.
The memoir, named after an Arabic term for resilience and endurance, dedicates its Cape Town chapter to Smith, Warner and Bancroft. Khawaja said the trio “deserve” the “justice” of collective blame from the team as a whole. “None of those three want to be the first to say anything. And rightly so, it will just be hearsay and ‘their word’ if they do. They needed someone else to say something,” he added. “But I’m not doing this for any other reason than I think it’s the right thing to do.”
Whether Cricket Australia revisits its investigation in light of the autobiography remains the open question hanging over the sport’s governing body.