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Usman Khawaja’s explosive claims about the ball tampering scandal is the last thing Pat Cummins needed.
As Cummins confronts the dual challenge of a faltering team and a rare form trough, the captain now also faces a public examination over his integrity.
The inquisition over whether he should have bowled first in the Cape Town decider is small fry compared to the questions raised by Khawaja’s account in his autobiography, Sabr, of what happened eight years earlier in South Africa.
The timing of Khawaja’s fresh evidence can be questioned – and was by many in and around the game on Saturday – but the substance of what he told this masthead marries up with much of what has long been said privately in Australian cricket circles.
That more people knew about the sandpaper plot in Cape Town than the three men who took the fall for it – Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft.
The pressure is now on Cricket Australia to reopen their investigation and confront uncomfortable truths about what happened not only in the change rooms at Newlands but at St George’s Park in Port Elizabeth, now known as Gqeberha.
They should, even if there are enough conflicting accounts to ascertain exactly what happened.
Did the team openly decide sandpaper was the way forward to reverse swing? Was it used in Port Elizabeth, and how? Why did the team not take collective responsibility? Who knew what and when?
Heads need not roll, and bans do not have to be handed out, but the cricket public deserve better.
CA’s leadership has changed since 2018 but in the coming days and weeks the same organisation will ask fans to dip into their wallets and buy tickets for the upcoming series against New Zealand – the same fans who have not been told the full story.
CA is adamant there will be no fresh inquiry. Khawaja’s claims may be new to the public but cricket officials have been aware of the material for a while now.
Khawaja’s version of the truth is different to Cummins’ and the rest of the attack – Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc and Nathan Lyon – whose representatives declined to comment.
The quartet released a carefully worded statement in 2021 after Bancroft’s interview with Donald McRae in The Guardian , when he said it was “self-explanatory” that other members of the team knew.
“We did not know a foreign substance was taken onto the field to alter the condition of the ball until we saw the images on the big screen at Newlands,” the bowlers said.
Darren Lehmann, the coach at the time, contested the idea everyone knew sandpaper would be used.
“You do know ball tampering was going on because it’s been happening for 150 years, it’s how it’s being done and how you would know to that extent, and how the bowlers would know, how other bowlers would know,” Lehmann told ABC radio. “That’s an individual case by case, to be fair.”
There are more losers than winners out of Khawaja’s revelations. Even the players who he dedicated the chapter to – Smith, Warner and Bancroft – do not come out without bruises.
In the twilight of his career, former captain Smith does not need to relive the darkest chapter of his life. Khawaja’s claim Australia had used sandpaper in Gqeberha contradicts Smith’s assertion at the fateful press conference “ I can promise you that this is the first time it has happened ”.
Bancroft’s culpability is lessened, but the path back to the Test side remains rocky. It’s hard to see this latest chapter improving his relationship with Cummins. The opening batter would be well advised to let all future enquiries through to the keeper.
Both Bancroft and Smith copped long sanctions, and are still playing.
Then there’s Khawaja himself. He is a free thinker, unafraid to challenge officialdom and management.
Teammates, though, are well within their right to question why he has publicly raised the matter after he has retired, and done so in a book – a point raised by Lehmann, who made several references to the damage the scandal did to his mental health and others at the time.
As one industry source mused, how will Khawaja go sitting in the Kayo commentary box next to Starc’s wife, former national women’s captain Alyssa Healy?
The big winner is Warner, who has admirably resisted temptation to speak openly about what happened but now has had someone else pull the trigger for him.
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