Pat Cummins Calls Usman Khawaja's Sandpaper Claims 'Utter Nonsense'

Australia captain Pat Cummins has rejected former team-mate Usman Khawaja's account of the 2018 sandpaper scandal, calling the claims "100% wrong" and "utter nonsense," BBC Sport reported. In 2018, Steve Smith, David Warner, and Cameron Bancroft were punished for a plot to tamper with the ball using sandpaper in a Test against South Africa in Cape Town. Cummins, speaking at a media conference he arranged himself, said he had consistently denied knowledge of what happened. "I did not know that was happening," he said. "He says that I and others were architects of a scheme to ball tamper with sandpaper. That's complete and utter nonsense."

Cummins and Khawaja played 56 Tests together until Khawaja retired from international cricket in January. Khawaja was in the Australia side when Cummins made his Test debut in 2011, and they were once New South Wales team-mates. "Usman is a friend, but friends aren't casual with each other's lives and reputations," Cummins said. "In his book he's been casual with my life and the lives of many others — and, I think, Australian cricket. I support him to tell his story, 100%, I'm glad he feels like he can, but we have to be accountable for the things that we say and do." He promised to answer all questions because, he said, "I don't want to talk about this again after today."

At times emotional, Cummins said some of Khawaja's claims had been described as defamatory, but that he would not take legal action. He had been in contact with Khawaja and Smith since the book was published, but not with Warner. He also said the one-year bans handed to Smith and Warner, and Bancroft's nine-month suspension, were "heavy handed," that he had no recollection of Australia tampering with the ball in the 2017-18 Ashes series against England, and that he had met Cricket Australia chief executive Todd Greenberg, who has reviewed the files from the original investigation.

The verified news is a public, detailed denial from the current captain, eight years after the Cape Town bans, in response to a former team-mate's book. It does not reopen the original findings against Smith, Warner, and Bancroft, and it is not an admission of a wider plot. Cummins's position is that he was not an architect of the scheme and did not know it was happening. Those original punishments, and who knew what in Cape Town, remain the backdrop to this argument; Cummins is asking to be judged on his denial, not on a new formal inquiry.