Khawaja Says the Whole Squad Knew of Sandpaper Ball Tampering, Eight Years On

Usman Khawaja has reopened the most notorious episode in modern Australian cricket, claiming that sandpaper ball tampering during the 2018 South Africa tour was known to the entire touring group and not just the three players who were punished. The retired opener’s claim, taken from his autobiography Sabr, is flatly at odds with the findings of Cricket Australia’s investigation and with years of denials from the team’s bowlers.

“It was all of us. Not the batters, not the bowlers, not the staff. All of us,” Khawaja told Nine newspapers, including the Sydney Morning Herald. The 39-year-old, who played 88 Tests and scored 6,229 runs before announcing his retirement in January, said he had expected the full story to emerge long before now. “I genuinely thought after eight years the truth would have been out by now,” he said.

What Khawaja says happened in Port Elizabeth

Khawaja’s account pushes the timeline back beyond Cape Town. He says the team used sandpaper in the second Test at Port Elizabeth, now Gqeberha. According to extracts of the book, open discussion in the dressing room about roughing up the ball led to the “discovery of sandpaper as an effective agent”. He says Cameron Bancroft volunteered to use it in South Africa’s first innings, when the ball swung considerably.

Khawaja also writes that Steve Smith “essentially threw his hands in the air” and said he did not want to know. The plan unravelled in the third Test at Newlands, when television cameras caught Bancroft handling the sandpaper on the field.

Smith and David Warner were each suspended for 12 months, and Bancroft for nine. Cricket Australia’s investigation found only those three had prior knowledge. Khawaja dedicates the “sandpapergate” chapter to them and says he urged teammates in the dressing room to share the blame. “Obviously, it didn’t work that way, and those three guys got crucified,” he said. He also said he was surprised that nobody asked him for evidence during the inquiry.

Denials from bowlers, coach and Cricket Australia

The claim that bowlers knew has been the central unresolved question. Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon issued a joint statement in 2021 saying they “did not know a foreign substance was taken on to the field” until they saw the images on the big screen. They also noted that the umpires inspected the ball and saw no damage. That statement came days after Bancroft, asked in a Guardian interview whether the bowlers knew, called the answer “pretty probably self-explanatory”.

Cummins, now Test captain, said on 8 October that Khawaja had given him a heads-up about the book. He told reporters he had no concerns, saying it was “all dealt with then”.

Darren Lehmann, who was coach in 2018, was cleared of wrongdoing but resigned afterwards. He told ABC Sport he did not believe everyone could have known the details, and said the claims “drag up some bad memories”. He argued that tampering had long been a part of cricket, but conceded that “that doesn’t make it right” and that “we paid a heavy price”.

Cricket Australia said it remained “comfortable” with its original findings. It added that anyone with relevant information still has the opportunity to present it, and that all material submitted so far had been properly considered.

Why the sandpaper ball tampering claims matter now

Nothing in Khawaja’s account has been tested by any investigation, and those he implicates deny it. The dispute also rests on competing recollections of private dressing-room conversations from eight years ago, so it is unlikely to be settled quickly.

Still, the claim carries weight because of who is making it. Khawaja was a member of the squad and was himself cleared in the inquiry. The question of how far knowledge of the plan spread through the squad has hung over the scandal since 2018, and a former teammate’s detailed account will keep it alive. Whether Cricket Australia’s offer to hear new information leads anywhere is now the open question, with the book due out this week.

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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.