‘It was all of us’: Khawaja blows the whistle on more sandpaper use in South Africa in 2018

November 7, 2026 — 5:00am

As a shattered Australian cricket team limped to Johannesburg after the infamy of sandpapergate at Newlands in 2018, Usman Khawaja resolved to write down what he had seen and heard.

With the knowledge and backing of his wife-to-be Rachel, Khawaja took out his laptop in the team’s Sandton hotel and compiled a set of contemporaneous notes. In particular, he paid careful attention to the chronology of events on the tour that contrasted with an official investigation that concluded only David Warner, Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft had prior knowledge of the plot to use sandpaper on the ball in Cape Town.

Cricket Australia banned Warner and Smith for 12 months for their role in the scandal. Bancroft received nine months. Skipper Smith was told he would not be able to captain Australia again for at least two years, while Warner was told he would never be permitted to lead Australia.

Eight years on, Khawaja spoke to this masthead as he prepared to release his memoir Sabr, in which he has chosen to rip off the Band-Aid that he says obscured the truth of the tour; how Australia’s players found themselves trying to win a reverse-swing arms race with South Africa in a climate in which the world was watching everything an increasingly arrogant and unpopular team was doing.

But his most remarkable revelation is that sandpaper was first discussed, and used, by the team during the previous Test in Port Elizabeth, now known as Gqeberha.

Khawaja puts it simply: “It was all of us. Not the batters, not the bowlers, not the staff. All of us.”

Other players have denied, publicly, that they knew what was happening at Newlands. In 2021, bowlers Pat Cummins, Mitch Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon released a statement when the events of 2018 came back into the spotlight, denying that they had any knowledge of “a foreign substance” being taken onto the field to “alter the condition of the ball”.

Khawaja’s recollection of the tour switches the Rubicon moment from Cape Town and Newlands to the second day of the previous match in Port Elizabeth.

In his book, Khawaja recounts that:

• Open, lighthearted discussions were held in the dressing room at St George’s Park about how to find ways to rough up the ball, culminating in the discovery of sandpaper as an effective agent. It was at this point Smith essentially threw his hands in the air and said he didn’t want to know.
• At a break in play, Bancroft then volunteered to use sandpaper in South Africa’s first innings in Gqeberha. The ball swung lavishly during that period, a subject of discussion by players on the field.

• At Newlands, in a segmented dressing room, Khawaja sat next to Bancroft and saw who spoke to him and what about during the game. It was an exchange with a member of the coaching staff that helped set off the events that were about to unfold in front of the world.
• Later, after the use of sandpaper was exposed, Khawaja tried to convince Smith not to rush into a post-play press conference with Bancroft that would worsen the scandal.

Khawaja also confirms that he spoke passionately in the dressing room after the game for the team to take collective responsibility, rather than scapegoating Warner, Smith and Bancroft.

It’s a view he still holds today, and a major reason why he has chosen to come forward with his version of the truth.

“In an ideal world, I don’t want to do this,” Khawaja says. “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.

“Maybe I thought Davey would have exposed it, or someone else would have talked about it more. I just didn’t think it was going to come down to this. But the longer it’s gone on for, and right from the very start, I’ve been on the train of collectively taking it.

“Even in the change rooms when I was talking to them after the game. I said, ‘Take this as a team’. 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.

“Obviously, it didn’t work that way, and those three guys got crucified.”

The sandpapergate chapter of Sabr is dedicated to Warner, Smith and Bancroft. Khawaja explains why.

“I’ve seen Davey over the last eight years just get nailed bad over and over again, and it’s taken a big man not to say anything and just to stay quiet,” he says. “And he’s just copped it and he’s copped it and he’s copped it.

“And then ‘Bangers’ [Bancroft] in the same note, particularly, he played a little bit of Test cricket after that, but then never came back in, even though he’s been scoring a lot of runs. He’s been a terrific cricketer for a long time, but I know it’s something that hangs over his head.

“Even Steve Smith. Steve’s lucky, the greatest batsman of my generation. He came back from that, and he’s come back as good as he ever was in that first Ashes series, and it’s kind of been forgotten for him in some respects. But I know he has never ever forgotten that year and how it all panned out.

“But I’m not doing this for any other reason than I think it’s the right thing to do. I’ve always felt like there’s more to life than just cricket, and these guys, in some respect, deserve that justice. And it just doesn’t feel like anyone’s going to give it to them. None of those three want to be the first to say anything. And rightly so, it will just be hearsay and ‘their word’ if they do. They needed someone else to say something.”

Context, as Khawaja often says, is vital. So in the book he chronicles numerous instances of “ball management” in cricket prior to the South African tour, and the ways in which the team’s general behaviour was going downhill due to the win-at-all-costs mentality pushed by coaching staff and CA after the loss of five consecutive Test matches to Sri Lanka and South Africa in 2016. He also captures the febrile environment of the 2018 series, where Australia won well in Durban then saw themselves gradually run down by the Proteas.

“The South Africans were by far better than us at working on the ball, doing what they needed to be reversing it,” Khawaja says. “We were trying to keep up with them. They were so good, and I discuss in a little bit of detail about what I’d heard from one of their players and what they were doing.

“And you know what? We were just keeping up with the world game, and it was never sandpaper before that South African series. There was always other ways that you looked after a ball to get reverse swing. Every Australian team I had been in did something like using lollies for saliva to polish the shiny side, or intentionally throwing the ball into the wicket on purpose to work on the rough side, and neither of them are allowed.”

Cricket Australia’s investigation of the episode was swift and also ring-fenced around what had happened specifically on day three at Newlands. The investigation was conducted in this way partly because it needed to be concluded before the final match of the series at the Wanderers, in order for CA to know how many players needed to be flown in to play, and partly because it was held to establish, to a high standard, what had happened in Cape Town, not before it.

Nevertheless, CA did not interview all the players and staff, and Khawaja has always wondered why, having taken his dressing room stand, he was not called in.

“I was sitting next to Cam Bancroft that whole Test match, and I didn’t get interviewed,” he says. “I thoroughly feel that I didn’t get interviewed because of that, because they knew that I wanted to take it as a team, because they knew I was ready to tell the truth if I was interviewed.

“And I was waiting for my phone to ring. It just never rang, and then the penalties were given, and I couldn’t believe it.”

At the time, both in South Africa and afterwards, it was apparent that Bancroft, Warner and Smith all came under considerable pressure to take the rap. In particular, once they were charged under CA’s code of conduct and offered playing bans, they were left feeling they would endanger any future in the game if they requested hearings to challenge the charges. The code of conduct hearing process was widely reported to be an “appeal”, which was incorrect.

Asked why he did not speak up earlier, Khawaja says he wrestled in subsequent years with whether to come forward in a more formal way that may have forced CA to reopen its investigation. In 2021, he spoke to senior figures in Australian cricket about getting the truth out in public after Bancroft’s interview with Donald McRae in The Guardian, when he said it was “self-explanatory” that other members of the team knew.

It was those words that compelled Cummins, Starc, Hazlewood and Lyon to release their carefully worded statement. But like the CA investigation of 2018, the statement said nothing about what happened or was discussed in Port Elizabeth.

Another factor, of course, was that subsequent to Newlands, the Australian team’s behaviour did improve, and the reverse swing arms race was effectively called off later that year around the International Cricket Council table. Harsher penalties, of up to six Test matches or 12 ODIs, were introduced for ball tampering, and the ICC’s then chief executive David Richardson spoke strongly about the need for global action, not just in Australia.

“This has been perhaps one of the worst periods in recent memory for consistently poor player behaviour,” he said. “The global outcry in relation to the ball tampering is a clear message to cricket: enough is enough.”

Khawaja then spent time in and out of the national team before enjoying a highly fruitful final four years in Test cricket, ending with his final game at the SCG in January this year.

The publication of a post-retirement book is fairly standard for an Australian cricketer, but Khawaja has been careful to ensure this one did not get released during Australia’s first Test tour of South Africa since 2018, simply because he didn’t want to put the current side in an invidious position.

He confirms reports that he spoke to captain Cummins about the book before the series, which Australia lost 2-1. He also gave a heads-up to CA chief executive Todd Greenberg, and there were discussions with the publisher, Penguin, to ensure the South Africa tour was not used as a pre-publicity hook.

“I just want people to read the book and make up their own minds, and so when I called Pat, I said the same thing – I’m not going to tell you what I’m writing. I’m just going to tell you that I am writing something about sandpaper, and I want you to know from me.

“I’m trying to do it in a way where I still care about the team. I just came out of the team. I said to Pat, I don’t want to put added pressure on you or the boys, so you have my promise that if anything does get leaked [during the series], it’s not from me. You can guarantee it’s not from me, and I won’t be talking. And that’s why when the stuff came out with Pat. I didn’t say a word.

“I’m not out here to use that to my advantage. I could have very easily used this situation to my advantage, I actually could have written way more about it too, if I really wanted my book to gain hype, do whatever I want. But I said to him that’s not why I’m writing this. I’m writing this because I think it’s the right thing to do for the three guys who got cooked.”

One thing Khawaja does not know is how these revelations will be received by Cummins and others. He is hopeful that it will not affect his relationships with former teammates, but acknowledges that it may well cause fractures.

“I know potentially this might make people’s lives difficult for a little bit of time,” he said. “I don’t know how long, whatever it might be, but it might give other people a bit of reprieve. And at the end of the day I know it’s the truth. As I say at the start of the chapter ‘the truth will set you free’. And I absolutely believe that. We finally have an opportunity to move past this once and for all. Together.”

Ultimately, Khawaja, whose book’s title is an Arabic word that means patience, endurance, restraint and perseverance, is still fighting the same battle that took place in the Newlands dressing room at the end of the game. Cricket is a team game and what happened in 2018, he believes, was done as a team.

“If you read my story, if you read what I’m saying, I have numerous times said it’s us, the team. This is the team. It’s not Steve, Davey and Bangers. It’s all of us,” he says.

“At the end of the day, I still think it’s the right thing to do for particularly those three guys. And I think most of the guys in the team, at some level, will be relieved that we can finally move on.”

Sabr by Usman Khawaja, published by Penguin Random House, is available from November 10. Read an extract from the book in this masthead on Sunday.

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