For South African cricket fans, the picture from Newlands is easy to recall. Cameron Bancroft, a scrap of yellow sandpaper and a television camera that caught what Australia would have preferred to keep in the dressing room. Eight years later, Usman Khawaja’s memoir, Sabr, asks us to look one Test earlier, at St George’s Park. ABC Sport
Khawaja says sandpaper was already used on the ball during the second Test in Gqeberha. He also says talk of tampering was out in the open within the Australian camp. That is the part of his account that changes the question. If the ball was already being worked on in Gqeberha, what did the team carry from one Test to the next, and who understood what was happening? ABC Sport
Who knew what?
Cricket Australia’s 2018 investigation found that only Steve Smith, David Warner and Bancroft had advance knowledge of the Cape Town plan. Smith and Warner were banned for a year, and Bancroft for nine months. In 2021, the four Australian bowlers who played at Newlands issued a joint denial of prior knowledge. Darren Lehmann, the coach on that tour, has denied knowing about the use of sandpaper. Warner has now backed Khawaja’s account, while Cricket Australia says it stands by its findings. Reuters · ABC Sport
There’s a distinction worth keeping in view. Hearing teammates talk about roughing up a ball, knowing sandpaper has been used and knowing the plan for a particular session are three different things. Khawaja says he sat beside Bancroft at Newlands and was never interviewed by Cricket Australia about the incident. For me, that is the detail that deserves a straight answer. What could he have told investigators then, and how might it have changed the questions they asked? ABC Sport
Khawaja says he wanted to speak up in 2018 and that Smith persuaded him to hold back. He says he raised the issue again in 2021. He now argues that the team, himself included, should have taken responsibility together. Eight years is a long time to wait. It’s fair to ask him about that, and it’s fair to ask Cricket Australia what it did to hear from people who were in the room. ABC Sport
The other thing Khawaja kept private
Sabr means patience in Arabic. You can see why Khawaja chose it. Australia’s first Muslim Test cricketer was dropped repeatedly before returning in Sydney in 2022 and making a hundred in each innings against England. He has also revealed that he played with rheumatoid arthritis, diagnosed at 22, and kept it private for fear it would be held against him. Think back to those two hundreds in Sydney with that detail in mind. We could all see how much time he seemed to have at the crease. Very few people knew what it took for him to get out there. Penguin Books Australia · Cricket Australia · The Guardian
Khawaja has given us his account of that tour, and others who were there remember it differently. I keep coming back to St George’s Park. If his account of the second Test is right, then by the time the cameras picked up Bancroft at Newlands, Australia had already had a Test match’s worth of chances to ask what it was doing with the ball.
Author: swoosh0018
Explore • Eat • Travel • Discover Football & Sports Obcessed South Africa | Worldwide 🌎 Living Life Beyond the Ordinary Blog Thats Simply Sublimevel
