Former opener Usman Khawaja claimed on Saturday that the entire Australian team knew about the 2018 Sandpapergate scandal in Cape Town. He also said they employed the tactic during the previous Test at Port Elizabeth.
Captain Steve Smith, his deputy David Warner and Cameron Bancroft were sent home in disgrace. A Cricket Australia investigation found them to be the only three players with prior knowledge of the ball tampering plot.
Smith was banned for a year and sacked as skipper. Warner was suspended for 12 months and stripped of all leadership roles, while Bancroft received a nine-month ban.
Khawaja, who retired this year after 88 Tests, told the Sydney Morning Herald that everyone had prior knowledge. He made the remarks ahead of the release of his autobiography next week, which features a chapter dedicated to the issue.
"It was all of us," Khawaja said. "Not the batters, not the bowlers, not the staff, all of us."
Bowlers Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon all denied publicly in 2021 that they knew about it. Khawaja said he spoke in the dressing room after the Cape Town Test urging the team to take collective responsibility, rather than scapegoating Warner, Smith and Bancroft.
"In an ideal world, I don’t want to do this," Khawaja 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."
He added that he thought David Warner or someone else would have exposed it more, and he did not think it was going to come down to this.
In the book, according to the newspaper, Khawaja recounts that discussions about ways to rough up the ball were also held in the dressing room during the second Test at Port Elizabeth, now known as Gqeberha. It culminated in the discovery that sandpaper was effective. At this point Smith allegedly walked away, saying he did not want to know about it.
Bancroft then allegedly volunteered to use sandpaper in South Africa’s first innings in Gqeberha, where the ball swung significantly.
Cricket Australia said in a statement it was comfortable with the findings of its original investigation, but remained open to new evidence. The body stated there had 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.
"All relevant information presented to Cricket Australia to date has been properly considered," the organisation said, adding that they remain comfortable with the findings of their integrity process.
