Khawaja sandpaper claims: Three players took the fall, but he says “all of us” knew

The Khawaja sandpaper claims have reopened one of Australian cricket’s most damaging episodes, and the retired opener is now trying to control how they are read. In a two-part Instagram video posted on Sunday, Usman Khawaja said he has “not thrown anyone under the bus” with the allegations in his autobiography, Sabr, which is due out on Tuesday.

Khawaja’s central assertion, made a day earlier, is that the whole Australia team bore responsibility for the plot to use sandpaper on the ball in the 2018 Cape Town Test against South Africa. Only three men were sanctioned at the time: captain Steve Smith, vice-captain David Warner and Cameron Bancroft. Smith and Warner received one-year bans, and Bancroft, who was caught on camera, was suspended for nine months.

What Khawaja says he meant

Khawaja framed “all of us” as a statement of collective accountability, not a list of names. He said that “whether we like it or not, we are all responsible for what happened together,” and that he never speaks on anyone else’s behalf in the book. He blamed “clickbait” headlines for suggesting otherwise. He did not retreat from the underlying claim, though. Asked whether he would deny that everyone knew, he said he would not.

He also cast Smith, Warner and Bancroft as the real victims, saying they “took the blame for all of us” and endured public humiliation. By his account, he and the current players are not victims.

Why now, and why not earlier?

Much of Khawaja’s video was a defence of timing. He said he told Smith in 2018 that he wanted to go to the media after the penalties were handed down, but that Smith talked him out of it and insisted on taking the blame. He said he tried again in 2021, speaking with then-coach Justin Langer and Todd Greenberg, who was then chief executive of the players’ union and now runs Cricket Australia. That attempt came before a joint statement from Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon saying they did not know a foreign substance had been taken onto the field.

“I wasn’t going to go to war with those guys,” Khawaja said. He added that he stayed silent while still in the team, and invited critics to call him “a chicken.” He pointed to the book’s release after Australia’s recent Test series in South Africa, which the hosts won 2-1, as evidence this was not a money-making exercise. Reports also say he met Cummins in October to discuss the book’s contents.

Extracts from the book, as reported, go further than the “all of us” line. They allege that sandpaper was first used in the preceding Test in Gqeberha, initially at the start of sessions. They also allege that a member of the coaching staff encouraged Bancroft to step up what he was doing. These are Khawaja’s allegations and have not been independently established.

The pushback

The Khawaja sandpaper claims have not gone unchallenged. Former coach Darren Lehmann, who resigned after the scandal, told ABC: “I don’t think everyone would have known,” though he conceded that ball-tampering was a “big part” of international cricket in that era. The four bowlers named in the 2021 statement remain in the squad, with Cummins as Test captain, and have previously denied involvement or knowledge.

Cricket Australia has shown no appetite for a fresh investigation. It said that any relevant information can still be presented, that what it has received has been “properly considered,” and that it remains “comfortable with the findings of our integrity process.”

The immediate pressure may land on the current side. Cummins, Starc and Hazlewood are not involved in this month’s white-ball series against England, so stand-in captain Mitch Marsh is likely to be asked about the allegations. With the book out in days, Khawaja’s account and the denials look set to remain in direct conflict.

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File photo: 2018.01.05.17.43.25-Usman Khawaja & Steve Smith (38876757994).jpg by www.davidmolloyphotography.com from Sydney, Australia, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.