Khawaja's Claims on Sandpapergate Reignite Controversy
Nasser Hussain did not bother dressing it up. Sandpapergate, and everything that has followed, is, in his words, “a complete mess”.
Six years on from that grainy footage in Cape Town of Cameron Bancroft working a piece of sandpaper into the ball, the scandal that reshaped Australian cricket is back on centre stage. Usman Khawaja’s new book has dragged it there, and this time the questions are not about what happened, but who knew – and who was protected.
Khawaja’s claims reopen old wounds
Khawaja, part of that infamous Newlands Test, paints a very different picture to the official version that pinned the plot on Bancroft, then-captain Steve Smith and David Warner, cast as the architect.
He claims the entire team knew about the plan to tamper with the ball. He says Cricket Australia never even questioned him, despite the fact he was sitting next to Bancroft in the dressing room. He also writes that he urged the side to front up collectively and accept responsibility, only to be talked out of it by Smith.
That is the backdrop to Hussain’s blunt assessment on the Sky Sports Cricket Podcast.
“For the history of the game, people have been trying to work out what to do with cricket balls to make it swing more,” he said, listing the old tricks – mints, sweets, bouncing the ball into the dirt, Vaseline, dust from a pocket. None of it is new.
What still staggers him is the leap from grey areas to bright yellow sandpaper.
“How a side thought it was okay to take sandpaper out, how no one before that in a meeting went, ‘I don’t think this is okay, I don’t think we’re doing the right thing’, how they thought they were going to get away with it with all the cameras around, I don’t know.
“Then to lie about it after and for Cricket Australia not to speak to every player, not to speak to Khawaja who was sitting next to Bancroft. It just feels like a right mess.”
For Hussain, that jars with everything the Baggy Green has long represented to opponents.
“The team, the baggy green, the mateship and all that stuff – that was what playing Australia was like, so for an Australian team to say, ‘no, it’s just those three’ when it was never going to be just those three [is surprising].”
Atherton: Heavy bans, unanswered questions
Michael Atherton has flown straight into the storm. In Australia for England’s white-ball tour, which starts with the first ODI in Perth on Friday, he expects a “circus” when Mitchell Marsh fronts the media on Thursday.
Marsh, now Australia’s white-ball captain, is the only member of that Newlands XI in the current squad to face England. Usual ODI skipper Pat Cummins, plus Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc – all involved in the Cape Town Test – have been rested. Spinner Nathan Lyon, another from that game, is not in the squad either. Those four bowlers issued a joint statement in 2021 denying prior knowledge of the plot.
Atherton has never been convinced by Cricket Australia’s original handling of the scandal and believes the governing body is now paying the price.
He remembers the mood around that team. Khawaja, in his book, describes a side that had become “slightly out of control”, unlikable, driven by a win-at-all-costs mentality. Atherton sees the sandpaper as the moment that culture finally exploded.
“It was almost like the sandpaper was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” he said.
Smith and Warner received year-long bans. Bancroft was suspended for nine months. The punishments were severe, unprecedented in the modern game.
To Atherton, they were also flawed.
“They handed down unbelievably heavy sanctions – I thought hard-to-justify sanctions – and left three players to take the rap. But it left questions unanswered, left the door open for it to come back to haunt them, which it is doing now.”
He does not believe a fresh investigation is necessary. The damage, in his view, lies elsewhere – in a deeper sense of mistrust.
“It was eight years ago and there will be a weariness around the story eventually, because it’s all over every newspaper, podcast, whatever.
“But I do think the particular point about not having people’s backs is the thing causing the most disquiet [in the Australia public] and will rumble on for a while yet.”
That idea cuts to the core of Australian cricket’s self-image. The Baggy Green has always sold itself on loyalty, on mateship, on the notion that the dressing room is a sacred space. Khawaja’s account, and the lingering suspicion that only three men were left carrying the can, shreds that romanticism.
Cracks on and off the field
The timing could hardly be worse for Australia.
On the field, they have just lost 2-1 in South Africa in their first Test series there since Sandpapergate. Marnus Labuschagne, once the heartbeat of their batting, is out of form and has been dropped for the looming home series against New Zealand.
Ahead lies a brutal run: a five-Test tour of India, the day-night 150th anniversary Test against England at the MCG in March, then an away Ashes series in June and July. It is a schedule designed to test even the most settled side.
Atherton senses vulnerability.
“The schedule is brutal and unforgiving and already there’s cracks in that team,” he said. “It doesn’t feel as though the team is robust enough to get through this period.
“This [the ball-tampering claims] is adding a little bit more fuel to the fire.”
The fire now burns on two fronts. On the pitch, a champion side trying to hold its standards through an exhausting calendar. Off it, an old scandal that refuses to die, reignited by one of their own and by a lingering feeling that the full story – and the full accountability – never truly saw daylight.
Australia can manage workloads, rotate bowlers, juggle formats. What they cannot rotate is trust. And with Sandpapergate back on the front pages, that is the one resource they look in danger of running out of.
