Australian captain Pat Cummins claims his team has “moved on” from Sandpapergate, despite former teammate Usman Khawaja’s pending autobiography being set to reopen old wounds.
Khawaja, whose book is titled Sabr (the Arabic word for patience and endurance), was part of the Australian team during its darkest day in the field back in 2018 when Cameron Bancroft was caught putting yellow sandpaper down his trousers after attempting to tamper with the ball at Newlands.
The Pakistan-born Khawaja retired from international cricket at the beginning of the year, but has long been of the opinion that the entire team needed to take responsibility for the ball-tampering saga, and not just leave Bancroft, former captain Steve Smith and David Warner to receive the punishment and subsequent public condemnation.
Warner, in particular, was banned from holding any leadership positions in Australian cricket in the future. Khawaja and Warner are childhood friends, having grown up together in the Sydney suburbs before going on to play international cricket together.
But Cummins indicated that Khawaja has made contact about his pending book.
“Uz gave me a buzz a few weeks back [saying] that he is releasing a book,” the skipper told reporters on the eve of Australia’s first Test in South Africa since Sandpapergate.
“He didn’t go into too much detail, just basically gave me the heads-up that he is doing a book and, as always, no worries.”
Cummins wasn’t aware of the contents within the book, but was comfortable with anything that might be revealed.
“Not too sure, you need to ask him,” Cummins said. “But tell your story. It’s fine.
“It’s obviously a long time ago and all the investigations, everything was done back then, and we answered every question a million times.
“It was dealt with then and all I can say is that as a group, we have moved on.”
Respective broadcasters SuperSport (South Africa) and Fox (Australia) also took to social media on Thursday to remind each other that both teams have been caught tampering with the ball in the past.
SuperSport posted a video with the caption, “Our cameras will be sharp for this three-match Test series”, while Fox hit back with, “It’s easy to forget South Africa was caught ball tampering two years before Sandpapergate.”
