"It Was All of Us": Khawaja Reopens Sandpapergate
Eight years after Cape Town, Usman Khawaja's autobiography Sabr says the whole Australian dressing room knew about the ball-tampering plan, not just the three men who were banned. We rebuild what happened at Newlands in March 2018, explain why scuffing the ball matters for reverse swing, and set Khawaja's claims against what Warner, Cricket Australia, Lehmann and the bowlers have said.
Note: The 3D scenes in this film are reconstructions for illustration, not match footage. Usman Khawaja's claims are his own account and are disputed by others named in the film.
Key points
- Cape Town, March 2018: Cameron Bancroft was caught on camera using sandpaper on the ball. Steve Smith and David Warner were banned for 12 months, Bancroft for nine, and Smith could not captain Australia for two years.
- Khawaja says the idea started a Test earlier at Port Elizabeth, that a member of the coaching staff encouraged Bancroft at Newlands, and that Cricket Australia's investigators never interviewed him.
- David Warner called Khawaja's account "100 per cent accurate". Cricket Australia says it stands by its findings, and Darren Lehmann questioned the timing of a book released eight years on.
- In 2021, Cummins, Starc, Hazlewood and Lyon issued a joint statement denying any knowledge of a foreign object. Both stories cannot be fully true.
- The open question: were three men punished for something the whole team knew about?
Chapters
- The day Australian cricket changed forever
- Breaking down the mechanics of the ball tampering
- Usman Khawaja breaks the long-standing silence
- The fallout and the battle of conflicting stories
The full story
Reverse swing is the reason any of this happened. Keep one side of the ball shiny, rough up the other, and at pace it moves late and the opposite way to what batters expect. Doing that with anything abrasive is cheating, and on day three at Newlands, with South Africa building a lead and Australia's bowlers getting nothing, the TV cameras caught Bancroft working on the ball with something small and yellow.
The official story, settled within days, was three men, one plan, one Test. Khawaja's version, published in extracts by the Sydney Morning Herald, widens it to the whole group and pushes it back a Test. He says he pleaded with the team to take collective responsibility and was talked out of going public in 2018, and that he held the book back until Australia's tour of South Africa was over.
There is a fair case on both sides. Khawaja was in the room, is retired and has nothing to gain on the field. But it is one man's memory, eight years later, released the same week as his book, against four of Australia's best bowlers on the record.
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