The marquee Test series between South Africa and Australia gets underway in Durban on Friday, but the build-up has been all about the Sandpaper Gate and how Australia’s tour unravelled when they last came to the Rainbow Nation in 2018. Steve Smith, Cameron Bancroft and David Warner were all reprimanded and handed heavy punishments for their involvement in the infamous ball-tampering scandal.
Ahead of the series opener, it came to light that former Australia opening batter Usman Khawaja’s autobiography titled ‘Sabr’ is expected to shed light on the saga, and there might be some new revelations.
The autobiography will be released on November 10, and Code Sports reported on Thursday that Khawaja recently met Australia captain Pat Cummins to brief him on its contents. It is worth mentioning that the former Australian batter didn’t use a ghostwriter, and the publisher, Penguin Random House, hasn’t made the advance copies available, as reported by Cricinfo.
On Thursday, Cummins was asked about Khawaja and the upcoming book, and, in response, the premier speedster said he is not concerned about what the former opener will say about the Sandpaper Gate.
“Yeah, Uz gave me a buzz a few weeks back that he’s releasing a book,” Cummins told reporters in the pre-match press conference.
“He didn’t go back into too much detail. He just basically gave me a heads-up that he’s doing a book. As always, my response was, ‘No worries, you can tell your story. That’s fine’,” he added.
What happened in Cape Town in 2018?
Both Cummins and Khawaja were a part of the infamous Test in Cape Town, where Bancroft was caught on camera applying sandpaper to the ball. The incident then led to Smith and Warner’s resignations as captain and vice-captain. All three were handed bans by Cricket Australia for bringing the game into disrepute.
When Cummins was asked further about the matter, he said, “I’m not too sure. You’ll need to ask him. It was obviously a long time ago. All the investigations and everything was done back then. I answered every question a million times. It was dealt with then.”
“All I can say is as a group, we’ve moved on. Very happy with the last eight or nine years, how we’ve been as a group and evolved, and obviously my focus is on captaining the cricket team,” he added.
After the incident in 2018, all the Australian bowlers involved – Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc and Nathan Lyon issued a joint statement, saying they didn’t have any knowledge of Bancroft’s plans to tamper with the ball. In 2021, all four had gone public, asking for “rumour mongering” to end after Bancroft stated that it was “self-explanatory” that they knew more than they let on.