Three Players Took the Fall While the Bosses Shrugged

Usman Khawaja says the whole team knew. Eight years after Cape Town, the man who retired from international cricket in January has put it in print, in his autobiography Sabr: the entire Australian side knew about the ball tampering in 2018, and sandpaper had been used in an earlier match too. Cricket Australia's answer, delivered Tuesday by chief executive Todd Greenberg on SEN radio: "We don't see any compelling reason to open the investigation or revisit this again. I don't think there's anything that can be gained from that."

That's the apparatus talking. Three men were sacrificed to it.

Who Got Crushed

In March 2018, during the third Test against South Africa in Cape Town, Cameron Bancroft was caught using sandpaper on the ball. Cricket Australia banned Steve Smith and David Warner for a year and Bancroft for nine months. Warner was barred from ever being considered for a leadership position. The International Cricket Council fined the trio and suspended Smith for one game. Images of Smith in tears at a press conference went around the world. Then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull called it a "disgrace" and a "bitter blow to the pride of our country."

Khawaja's version of the aftermath is the one that stings. In Johannesburg, he writes, he bailed up Smith on the way to his hotel room and said he'd go to Cricket Australia officials himself. Smith pleaded with him to stay quiet. "It's OK, man, it's on me. I should have stopped it. Don't do anything – I don't want to drag anyone else into this," Smith told him, by Khawaja's account. Khawaja says he blew up, but couldn't go against the captain. "Obviously, it didn't work that way and those three guys got crucified," he told Nine newspapers.

Warner broke eight years of silence on Monday evening. "Now everyone knows the truth," he said, calling Khawaja's claims "100 per cent accurate" and Cricket Australia's investigation "rushed and botched."

What They're Calling "Integrity"

The institution's own review of itself found what it found. An independent review commissioned after the scandal called Cricket Australia "arrogant" and "controlling." It said the ball-tampering "can be seen as an aberration," then warned against believing that. "We have seen evidence that the structures built around elite cricket are oriented to winning, without properly counting the cost."

Simon Longstaff, executive director of The Ethics Centre, led the 2018 culture review for the peak body. He now says he heard whispers that the public record was inaccurate, that a cover-up was possible, and that he may have been lied to by players. The body that hired him is the one now declining to look again.

Cricket Australia's spokesperson said the organisation "remain[s] comfortable with the findings of our integrity process." Greenberg argued that reopening a hurried, limited-scope investigation would achieve little given the vastly differing recollections. No one is calling for heads to roll or fresh sanctions. The institution has, in Western Sydney University sociologist David Rowe's phrase, "put up the drawbridge." He called that "an ill-advised approach to take."

Loyalty Up the Chain

The fault lines run through the dressing room. In 2021, Bancroft hinted that bowlers knew about the sandpaper. Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon issued a statement saying they had no knowledge "of a foreign substance" being taken onto the field. Khawaja writes that the statement "really pissed me off, but not as much as it pissed Davey off." Starc has now become the first current player to deny the allegations, saying he and his fellow bowlers knew nothing until the sandpaper was caught.

Khawaja's book also describes an unnamed coach telling him and Bancroft, with a smile, "Bangers, whatever you're doing, we need more of it," before Bancroft pocketed a piece of sandpaper. The coach, he writes, "gave both me and Cameron a wry smile of satisfaction and walked away." That coach has no name in the record and no ban.

Smith, 37, is watching from New York before returning for a four-Test campaign against New Zealand. If he or another current player backs Khawaja, the side could be torn apart. Cummins, meanwhile, says it was a "long time ago" and that "as a group, we've moved on."

The lesson for anyone at the bottom of a hierarchy: the institution protects its own story first. The scapegoats carry the shame, the structures that rewarded winning at any cost stay put, and the people who knew keep their places in the dressing room.