Khawaja says Steve Smith talked him out of going public over sandpaper, as his memoir claims the whole team knew

Usman Khawaja says Steve Smith talked him out of going public about the 2018 ball-tampering scandal, insisting that he alone should take the blame.

In a five-minute Instagram video posted on Sunday, the retired Test opener said he had planned to speak out soon after Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft were banned, and argued with his captain about it. Smith, he said, refused to budge. “I haven’t thrown anyone under the bus,” Khawaja said.

The video was his answer to a weekend of anger over extracts from his memoir, Sabr, published on Saturday ahead of its release on Tuesday. In the book Khawaja writes that the sandpaper plan was known across the squad, not confined to the three players who were punished. “It was all of us,” he writes.

What does the book claim?

The most explosive claim is about timing. Khawaja writes that sandpaper was applied to a ball in the Australian dressing room during the second Test against South Africa at St George’s Park in Port Elizabeth, now Gqeberha, and that Bancroft volunteered to do it. It was first used only at the start of sessions, he says, before moving onto the field in the third Test at Newlands in Cape Town, where television cameras caught Bancroft with sandpaper in March 2018.

It is the first time anyone has publicly alleged sandpaper was used in the earlier Test.

Khawaja also alleges that an unnamed member of the coaching staff encouraged Bancroft to step up his efforts shortly before he was caught. He says he gave a speech in the dressing room on the third evening at Newlands urging the team to take collective responsibility.

Why did he wait eight years?

Khawaja said he tried again in 2021, when he spoke with then coach Justin Langer and then Cricket Australia chief executive Todd Greenberg about the whole team owning the scandal. Soon after, the four frontline bowlers, Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon, issued a joint statement saying they had not known a foreign substance was taken onto the field.

He said he had promised his childhood friend Warner that he would tell the full story in a memoir after he retired, and that holding the book back until after Australia’s latest Test tour of South Africa showed it was not about money. The real victims, he said, were the three suspended players, not the current team or the rest of the 2018 squad.

Khawaja retired from international cricket after Australia’s 4-1 Ashes win over England last summer.

What do Lehmann and Cricket Australia say?

Darren Lehmann, who resigned as coach before the final Test of that 2018 series, rejected the central claim. “I don’t think everyone would have known,” he said, adding he knew of no discussions about sandpaper and that the team had talked about how to get, and counter, reverse swing.

Lehmann was blunt about the era, though: he said “everyone around the world” was tampering with the ball until that series. He said he was not the coach Bancroft reportedly spoke to before the footage emerged, and that Khawaja had not contacted him before going public.

Cricket Australia said it “remains comfortable with the findings of our integrity process” and that anyone with relevant information still had the chance to present it. Khawaja has criticised the governing body for not interviewing him.

Cummins said Khawaja told him about the book beforehand without going into detail, that he should tell his story, and that all investigations were finished long ago.

Why does it matter now?

The 2018 investigation was the foundation of Australian cricket’s rebuild: the bans, the coaching change and the cultural reset that followed all rested on the finding that three men acted largely alone. A first-hand account from inside the dressing room that the plan was older and wider puts that finding back under pressure, and it lands as several players from that Test remain central to the current side.

It also reframes Smith and Warner’s punishment. Smith and Warner were each banned for 12 months, and Bancroft for nine. Khawaja’s account casts Smith’s acceptance of the blame as a choice to shield teammates.

VNN will update this story as more is confirmed.