Usman Khawaja has claimed that the entire Australian dressing room knew about the sandpaper scandal in Cape Town in 2018, contradicting the official account that only Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft were aware of the plan.
Khawaja, who retired from Test cricket earlier this year, played in the Newlands match that resulted in bans for the three players who accepted responsibility. Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald, he said: ‘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.’
The explosive claims appear in his new autobiography, Sabr, which is published next week. They are likely to cause fresh turmoil in Australian cricket, particularly because the bowlers involved in that match – Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon – issued a joint statement in 2021 maintaining that they had not known about the plan to use sandpaper to alter the ball and encourage reverse swing during the third Test against South Africa.
The statement followed a newspaper interview in which Bancroft was asked whether the bowlers had known what was happening. He replied: ‘Uh… yeah, look, I think, yeah, I think it’s pretty probably self-explanatory.’
However, Khawaja, who scored more than 6,000 runs in 88 Tests, writes that the plan was first discussed during the second Test at Port Elizabeth, now known as Gqeberha. Those conversations, he says, resulted in the ‘discovery of sandpaper as an effective agent’.
Usman Khawaja has challenged the claim that the wider Australian team knew nothing about the infamous sandpaper scandal
Australia used sandpaper to alter the ball against South Africa in 2018, although only three players said they were involved
He writes: ‘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 had urged the team to accept collective responsibility once the ball-tampering was exposed in Cape Town.
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‘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.’
Khawaja was also astonished that Cricket Australia never asked him to provide evidence during its investigation into the incident.
Steve Smith broke down in tears while addressing the Australian media after the incident and later lost the captaincy as a result
‘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 reported that Warner had admitted to England players during post-Ashes drinks three months earlier that he had used tape attached to his hand to tamper with the ball.