Australia Test captain Pat Cummins held a 68-minute press conference at Cricket Central in Sydney on Friday to reject former teammate Usman Khawaja’s new book claims that the entire Australian XI knew about the 2018 Cape Town ball-tampering plot. According to ESPNcricinfo, Cummins pledged to answer every question from reporters ahead of a New South Wales Sheffield Shield match so the team would not have to revisit the controversy.
Speaking at Cricket NSW headquarters at 9:30 a.m. local time, Cummins said Khawaja was completely wrong to claim the whole team knew sandpaper was going onto the field in Cape Town. He maintained he has consistently stated for the past eight years that he had no knowledge of the incident at the time.
“He says that I and others were architects of a scheme to ball-tamper with sandpaper. That’s complete and utter nonsense. I was genuinely shocked this week when I found out that Usman admitted that he told Cam [Bancroft] ” to be careful while using the sandpaper, Cummins said.
Cummins added that while he considers Khawaja a friend and supports his right to tell his story, the opening batter had been “casual with my life and the lives of many others” in the book. As reported by The Guardian, Cummins confirmed he received advice this week that parts of the book were likely defamatory, though he ruled out filing a lawsuit.
“I mean, I did get advised this week that some of the things that have [been] said are probably defamatory. I won’t be doing that. You got to move on.”
For Australian cricket fans and the national Test setup, Friday’s confrontation leaves both the leadership structure and the 2018 disciplinary record unchanged. Cricket Australia CEO Todd Greenberg and chairman David Boon confirmed the governing body will not reopen the 2018 investigation, and Boon affirmed full confidence in Cummins’s captaincy.
What Cummins Disputed From Khawaja’s Book
The dispute stems from Khawaja’s autobiography, Sabr, released on Tuesday. In the book, Khawaja alleged that ball-tampering also occurred during the prior Test in Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha), that the entire team knew about the Cape Town plot, and that two players refused when he pushed for the squad to take collective blame in a team meeting.
Cummins rejected each of those points on Friday. He said there was no scheme among the bowlers to tamper with the ball in 2018, when he was 24 years old and playing his 13th Test.
“There’s no grand plan. There’s no team meeting. There’s no bowlers saying this is what must happen.”
He also said Khawaja’s claim that sandpaper was used on the boundary edge before a session in Port Elizabeth was a revelation to him and several teammates he spoke with this week. Cummins noted he had no memory of any meeting in Cape Town where someone proposed taking collective responsibility, adding that other teammates he contacted could not recall such a conversation either.
Cummins did acknowledge flaws in the 2018 squad’s culture, saying there were “too many silos within the team,” along with an ugly underbelly and a win-at-all-costs mentality that the group eradicated over the subsequent years. He added that the only illegal ball-tampering he ever saw on the field happened early in his career during a Sheffield Shield game, when a senior New South Wales batter used a bottle cap on the ball and was immediately stopped by the umpires.
Addressing Khawaja’s claim that investigators never interviewed him in Cape Town despite sitting next to Cameron Bancroft in the dressing room, Cummins confirmed he was interviewed in 2018 by Cricket Australia’s then-head of integrity Iain Roy and High Performance manager Pat Howard. Cummins said he spoke with Greenberg on Friday morning to verify his recollections of that review.
Reactions Across Australian Cricket
The book’s release has split former members of the 2018 touring party. Steve Smith, David Warner, and Bancroft were banned following the original March 2018 investigation, while bowlers Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, and Nathan Lyon issued a joint statement in 2021 denying they knew a foreign substance had been taken onto the field.
This week, former teammates Warner and Chadd Sayers publicly backed Khawaja’s account. Starc denied on Tuesday having any prior knowledge of the plot, and former Australia batting coach Graeme Hick also rejected the allegations in comments reported by Dawn.
“In regard to any discussions around the ball-tampering in Port Elizabeth or Cape Town that took place, I will say in true honesty that I did not hear or know anything,” Hick told the Sydney Morning Herald.
Boon reiterated that Cricket Australia considers the matter closed.
“I respect (Khawaja’s) point of view and his recollections of what occurred, and they’re his, but we don’t want to get into a he-said-she-said argument.”
Cummins confirmed he exchanged brief text messages with Khawaja this week and said he does not intend to speak publicly about the allegations again as he turns his focus to playing for New South Wales in the Sheffield Shield at Cricket Central.