Usman Khawaja has blown open one of cricket’s most painful chapters, claiming that the whole Australia team knew about the sandpaper plot that disgraced the side in South Africa in 2018. The retired opener says the tampering was not the work of three men, as Cricket Australia has always maintained, but something the entire touring party was aware of — and that it began a Test earlier than anyone has admitted.
“It was all of us. Not the batters, not the bowlers, not the staff. All of us,” Khawaja told the Sydney Morning Herald, in extracts from his autobiography published three days before the book’s release. The Usman Khawaja sandpaper claim, which Cricket Australia has already rejected, has reopened a scandal many in the sport believed was closed eight years ago.
The revelation challenges the official version of events: Cricket Australia’s investigation concluded that only Smith, Warner and Bancroft knew about the plan. Khawaja, who batted at No. 3 in that match, says that finding is simply wrong.
What Khawaja claims happened in South Africa
According to Khawaja, the idea was first discussed openly in the dressing room during the second Test at Port Elizabeth, now Gqeberha — a full Test before the infamous scenes at Newlands. The players talked lightheartedly about making the ball swing, and the discussions led to the discovery of sandpaper as an effective way to do it.
The Usman Khawaja sandpaper account goes further still: at a break in play during the Port Elizabeth Test, Bancroft volunteered to use sandpaper in South Africa’s first innings, and the ball swung lavishly. If true, Australia used the illegal tactic in two Tests, not one — a detail never in the official record.
Khawaja also describes the moment the plan was raised with Smith. In his telling, the then-captain threw his hands in the air and said he did not want to know the details. Khawaja says he urged his team-mates afterwards to take collective responsibility. “We did this as a team. We knew what was going on, and we have to take it as a team, and so I was always of that stance,” he said.
The scandal broke on the third day of the Cape Town Test in March 2018, when television cameras clearly showed Bancroft using a small yellow object — later confirmed to be sandpaper — to scuff one side of the ball. Smith and Warner were banned for a year, Bancroft for nine months, and all three were sent home in disgrace.
Never interviewed — and why that matters
The most damaging part of the Usman Khawaja sandpaper story may concern the investigation itself. He says Cricket Australia never interviewed him, despite sitting next to Bancroft in the dressing room throughout the Cape Town Test. “I was sitting next to Cam Bancroft that whole Test match, and I didn’t get interviewed,” he said.
Khawaja believes the omission was deliberate — that investigators knew he would tell the truth. “I don’t 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,” he said.
Cricket Australia has stood by its findings, saying all relevant information had been properly considered and that it remained comfortable with the findings of its integrity process. That position is now harder to defend. In 2021, Bancroft himself hinted that others in the team had known, and the same year the four bowlers — Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon — issued a joint statement insisting they knew nothing. The Usman Khawaja sandpaper account directly contradicts that statement, and it puts Cummins, now the Australian captain, in a particularly awkward spot.
The book behind the bombshell
The Usman Khawaja sandpaper claims come from his autobiography, Sabr: Finding My Way in Cricket and Life, published on Tuesday, 10 November. The title takes its name from the Arabic word for patience and endurance. The 448-page book was written by Khawaja himself, without a ghostwriter, and he has dedicated the chapter on Cape Town to Smith, Warner and Bancroft.
Khawaja briefed both Cummins and Cricket Australia chief executive Todd Greenberg about the book before its release. Cummins said last month that he had spoken to Khawaja and had no concerns about what it might reveal. The Sydney Morning Herald is serialising the book, and its extracts have made the Usman Khawaja sandpaper story the most searched cricket topic in Pakistan today.
For Pakistani fans, Khawaja holds a special place. Born in Islamabad, he became the first Muslim and Pakistan-born cricketer to represent Australia, playing 88 Tests and scoring 6,229 runs before retiring after Australia’s 4-1 Ashes win over England earlier this year. His 141 in Dubai in 2018, batting more than twelve hours to save a Test Pakistan seemed certain to win, made him a hero in both countries.
What happens next for Australian cricket
The immediate question after the Usman Khawaja sandpaper claims is whether anyone else from that 2018 touring party will speak. If the whole team knew, then the bowlers’ 2021 denial and Cricket Australia’s investigation both need revisiting. So far there has been no public response from Smith, Warner or Bancroft, and no sign that Cricket Australia intends to reopen its inquiry.
But the claims may force the issue anyway. The book’s release on Tuesday will put the full account, in Khawaja’s own words, into the public domain, and every detail will be picked over. For a sport that prides itself on the spirit of cricket, the idea that an entire team knew and nobody spoke up is, in its own way, worse than the cheating itself.
Khawaja says he is not seeking revenge, describing the book as an honest account of his life in cricket. Yet by finally telling the story he expected others to tell eight years ago, he has ensured Sandpapergate will dominate the conversation again. Whether the truth finally comes out may depend on whether his former team-mates will say the same three words he has: it was all of us.
Sources: Sky Sports; ESPNcricinfo. For more cricket coverage, read about Shadab Khan’s unbeaten 113 that rescued Pakistan against England in Lahore and the history and current squad of the Pakistan cricket team.
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