Usman Khawaja has claimed that the entire Australian dressing-room knew about the sandpaper scandal at Cape Town in 2018 – despite the official line that only Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft were aware of the scheme.
Khawaja, who retired from Test cricket earlier this year but took part in the game at Newlands that led to bans for the three players who admitted responsibility, told the Sydney Morning Herald: ‘It was all of us. Not the batters, not the bowlers, not the staff. All of us.’
He added: ‘At the end of the day, I think it’s the right thing to do, particularly for those three guys. And I think most of the guys in the team, at some level, will be relieved that we can finally move on.’
His explosive claims, which feature in his new autobiography, Sabr, published next week, will rock Australian cricket, not least because the bowlers in that game – Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon – issued a joint statement in 2021 insisting they had no idea about the plans to rub sandpaper on the ball in a bid to achieve reverse swing during the third Test against South Africa.
That followed a newspaper interview in which Bancroft, asked if the bowlers knew what was going on, replied: ‘Uh… yeah, look, I think, yeah, I think it’s pretty probably self-explanatory.’
But Khawaja, who scored over 6,000 runs in 88 Tests, writes in his book that the plans were first discussed in the second Test at Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha). The discussions, he writes, led to the ‘discovery of sandpaper as an effective agent’.
Usman Khawaja has blown apart the claim that the whole Australian team did not know about the infamous sandpaper cheating scandal
Sandpaper was used by the Australians to change the condition of the ball against South Africa in 2018 but only three players said they were involved
He adds: ‘It was at this point Smith essentially threw his hands in the air and said he didn’t want to know.’
Khawaja told the SMH that he urged the team to take collective responsibility after their cheating was exposed at Cape Town.
‘In an ideal world, I don’t want to do this,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to be the one who comes out and talks about the truth.
‘The issue is that I genuinely thought after eight years the truth would have been out by now.
‘Maybe I thought Davey would have exposed it, or someone else would have talked about it more.
‘I just didn’t think it was going to come down to this. But the longer it’s gone on for, and right from the very start, I’ve been on the train of collectively taking it.
‘Even in the change rooms when I was talking to them after the game. 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.” So I was always of that stance. Obviously, it didn’t work that way, and those three guys got crucified.’
To his astonishment, Khawaja was never asked to give evidence while Cricket Australia investigated the events of that game.
Steve Smith broke down in tears as he faced the Australia media following the incident. He would go on to lose the captaincy as a result of his actions
‘I was sitting next to Cam Bancroft that whole Test match, and I didn’t get interviewed. I thoroughly feel that I didn’t get interviewed because they knew that I wanted to take it as a team, because they knew I was ready to tell the truth if I was interviewed.
‘And I was waiting for my phone to ring. It just never rang, and then the penalties were given, and I couldn’t believe it.’
The day after the sandpaper scandal, Daily Mail Sport revealed that, three months earlier, Warner had confessed to England’s players during the post-Ashes drinks that he had been using tape attached to his hand to tamper with the ball.
