NEW light has been shed on one of the most orchestrated cricketing scandals in recent times — the ball-tampering one featuring members of the Australian team against South Africa in a Test in 2018 — by Usman Khawaja. The recently retired Australian batter, who had played in that infamous second Test in Port Elizabeth, known as Gqeberha these days, told an Australian publication that everybody was in on it.
"It was all of us. Not the batters, not the bowlers, not the staff. All of us," he said ahead of the release of his autobiography next week, where a chapter is dedicated to the issue. The issue, colloquially known as 'sandpapergate' after TV cameras picked up an Australian fielder using the material on the ball in the hope of achieving exaggerated swing, sent shockwaves within the wider cricketing fraternity.
Following an internal Cricket Australia investigation, then captain Steve Smith, deputy David Warner and Cameron Bancroft (the fielder the cameras had picked up) were sent home, apart from being handed suspensions. Now, according to Khawaja, who batted at No. 3 in that Test, all of them knew.
"In an ideal world, I don't want to do this," Khawaja told the Sydney Morning Herald. "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 (Warner) 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."
The respected 39-year-old Australian southpaw, who played his 88th and last Test in January, even claimed that he had made a speech in the dressing room after the third Test in Cape Town, where he wanted the team to take collective responsibility.
The four bowlers involved in that match — Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon — all denied publicly in 2021 that they knew about it. Cricket Australia said in a statement it was "comfortable" with the findings of its original investigation, but remained open to new evidence. "There has been a great deal of speculation in the eight years since the 2018 Cape Town Test, including extensive media coverage throughout last month's series in South Africa," it said.
