{"id":957226,"date":"2026-11-08T16:20:10","date_gmt":"2026-11-08T16:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/957226\/"},"modified":"2026-11-08T16:20:10","modified_gmt":"2026-11-08T16:20:10","slug":"sandpapergate-is-the-stain-australia-cricket-cannot-scrub-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/957226\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Sandpapergate’ is the stain Australia cricket cannot scrub away"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than eight years on, the stench around \u201cSandpapergate<\/a>\u201d is as overpowering now as it was when TV cameras picked up Cameron Bancroft ball-tampering during the Cape Town Test match.<\/p>\n

Apologies for the crude analogy but for Australian cricket<\/a> this is the unflushable turd. However hard they try and move on, it just won\u2019t go away. Now the fallout from Usman Khawaja\u2019s bombshell allegations promise to have ramifications way beyond next summer\u2019s Ashes.<\/p>\n

Khawaja, who retired from cricket at the end of last winter\u2019s Ashes, has alleged in his upcoming book Sabr that it wasn\u2019t only Bancroft, Steve Smith and David Warner who were involved in the 2018 ball-tampering scandal<\/a> in South Africa. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was all of us,\u201d he said. \u201cNot the batters, not the bowlers, not the staff. All of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taking collective responsibility at the time when the plot was uncovered was discussed in the dressing-room, says Khawaja, but in the end, it was a path the team decided not to take<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"SYDNEY,Pat Cummins confirmed that Khawaja gave him a polite heads-up about the contents of his autobiography (Photo: Getty)<\/p>\n

He also says that the third Test in Cape Town wasn\u2019t the first time Australia had used sandpaper to doctor the ball. They had, states Khawaja, also used it in the previous Test in Gqeberha.<\/p>\n

For those England players who privately remain convinced Australia tampered with the ball during the 2017-18 Ashes just a few months before that South Africa tour<\/a> this will not come as a surprise. Nor for any cricket fan with half a brain cell. It was always suspected that the bowlers, in particular, knew what was going on. <\/p>\n

Bancroft more or less said this during an interview with The Guardian in 2021. That led to Pat Cummins, now captain, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon collectively releasing a statement denying that was the case. All have been silent since Khawaja\u2019s allegations surfaced.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cIn an ideal world, I don\u2019t want to do this,\u201d Khawaja said. \u201cI don\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cricket Australia, which handed out lengthy bans<\/a> to Smith, Warner and Bancroft, released a statement in response to Khawaja\u2019s allegations. \u201cWe remain comfortable with the findings of our integrity process,\u201d it said. But how long will that stance hold?<\/p>\n

This situation was always likely to come. The Australian governing body\u2019s own investigation at the time was limited to just the Cape Town Test. <\/p>\n

Adam Gilchrist, the former Australia captain, telegraphed this in 2021 when he said: \u201cThere was an opportunity for Cricket Australia to do a more thorough investigation. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt will linger for ever and ever, whether it\u2019s someone\u2019s book or an ad hoc interview, eventually names will be named. There\u2019s a few people that have got it stored away and are ready to pull the trigger when the time is right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Darren Lehmann, Australia coach at the time<\/a>, has denied Khawaja\u2019s suggestions that the whole team knew. <\/p>\n

But Chad Sayers, a member of the squad on that infamous tour has backed up his former teammate, telling Australian website Code Sports: \u201cEverything Usman says in his article is accurate, but if he felt so strongly about it, why didn\u2019t he say something at the time?\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet Khawaja, in a stream of Instagram posts over the weekend, doubled down on his allegations and defended his reasons for coming clean now.<\/p>\n

Read more<\/p>\n

There seems little appetite from Cricket Australia to reopen the investigation \u2013 and hand out potential further bans that would affect next summer\u2019s series against England. Yet what will the ramifications be for Cummins, a captain who is already under pressure after the recent series defeat in South Africa?<\/p>\n

At some point, he will have to face the media. Could this tip him over the edge? Whatever happens, one thing is obvious. Khawaja\u2019s allegations, whether true or not, promise to taint an entire generation of Australian cricketers.<\/p>\n

As for the 2027 Ashes, Australia\u2019s players will have to get used to the common refrain still chanted by England fans \u2013 \u201cSame old Aussies, always cheating.\u201d It promises to be the soundtrack of the summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than eight years on, the stench around \u201cSandpapergate\u201d is as overpowering now as it was when TV…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":957227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,15060,740,490052,85,1211,70541],"class_list":["post-957226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australia-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sandpapergate","tag-sports","tag-test-cricket","tag-usman-khawaja"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=957226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/957227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=957226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=957226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=957226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}