Pat Cummins press conference live updates: Australian cricket captain speaks about Usman Khawaja’s ‘sandpapergate’ claims

Cummins says he was “genuinely shocked” this week amid the comments in Khawaja’s book. He went on:

When he says we all knew, if that he means we knew sandpaper was going out on the field, he’s 100% wrong. I said that consistently for the last eight years. I did not know that was happening …

He says that I and others were architects of a scheme to ball-tamper with sandpaper. That’s complete and utter nonsense.

Cummins goes on to say he believes Khawaja’s book has “been casual with my lives and the lives of many others, and I think Australian cricket”.

Cummins said he’s been frustrated Khawaja’s book is relitigating an episode from more than eight years ago, adding it had reopened trauma for some:

It’s eight and a half years, we have moved on.

We’ll keep saying it but, again, these are people’s lives. It was traumatic for some of them. They have had to work through quite a bit to get out the other side.

So again, that’s why I’m really disappointed and frustrated this week … how it’s been dealt with so flippantly.

Cummins says there’s a ‘proper way to do things’

Cummins says he believes there was a proper way to handle the sandpaper incident, pointing to the Cricket Australia investigation shortly afterwards.

Cricket Australia’s chief executive, Todd Greenberg, told media this week there was not “any compelling reason” to revisit the investigation, even though there are “specific details” in Khawaja’s book “that contradict the versions that have been provided by others”.

There’s a very proper way to do things and improve. I think that investigation was a proper way to do it.

Everyone was asked in the circumstances about a game very quickly after. So that’s for CA. I think you can maybe argue whether the judgements were fair, but what can you do? I got asked all the questions, answered them all fairly.

A reporter just asked about the difference in stories. Cummins replied:

He went on to say there appeared to be a “few big leaps” in the book and Khawaja had been “vague” and acted in a “very casual matter”:

The details really matter in that difference. So perhaps there was conversations with Cameron Bancroft around taking sandpaper out and how to do it. That doesn’t mean that everyone in that dressing room knew what was going on.

There was no master plan around using illegal methods. I think that’s maybe something that hasn’t been spoken about enough. People assume you have gone from very legal methods to suddenly taking sandpaper and then there must have been some huge master plan.

There’s no grand plan, there’s no team meeting, there’s no bowlers saying ‘this is what must happen’.

Cummins: ‘I did not see anything on the ball’

Cummins was asked how the ball looked at the time.

At that stage, you know, even the umpires had a look. We didn’t know it had been altered with sandpaper.

Balls get roughened up every time we play. So, you know, whether that’s from a foreign object or something that’s totally legal and part of the game. Sometimes it’s hard to know. But out there in the field I did not see anything on the ball.

Khawaja memoir ‘readable, surprisingly revealing, sometimes painfully frank’

Gideon Haigh, writing for the Guardian this week, says the greatest shame of the controversy inflamed by Usman Khawaja’s memoir, Sabr, is that “99% of those opining about it will never read it”.

They will experience it by quotes and summaries, magnified and distorted, elided and exaggerated, shaped by voyeurism and schadenfreude.

In fact, Sabr is a readable, surprisingly revealing, sometimes painfully frank book about a unique career.

Haigh says Khawaja was among the most talented batters in an Australian generation “when it was not in oversupply”, but points out he played in only 22% of the national team’s total fixtures over that period.

If he developed a carapace to deal with such endless disappointment, should that surprise anyone?

Sabr might mean patience or resilience in Urdu, but a strength of Khawaja’s testament is that he allows the impatience to show through.

It is a cranky book because, perhaps, a degree of crankiness is what it takes to come back and back and back, when one is never sure one’s abilities are appreciated and one’s face fits.

Starc statement: ‘we weren’t aware of things being taken on the field’

Earlier this week, Mitchell Starc denied claims made in Khawaja’s book.

Starc broke his silence to address Khawaja’s comments, saying he was not aware that sandpaper was used in the Test before Cape Town, nor during the Newlands match. The paceman said his recollection of the match had not changed from what the bowlers said in a statement issued in 2021, which denied all knowledge of the ball-tampering plan.

As far as our statement said, we weren’t aware of things being taken on the field, that’s where I’ll leave it. We weren’t aware anything was taken on to the field to be tampered with. We saw [the sandpaper] on the big screen in Cape Town.

As far as the book is concerned, I haven’t read it. I probably won’t read it. So that’s for Usman to elaborate on.

I’ll stick to what I said five years ago, what I said at the time, eight years ago. Clearly, there’s different versions from different people, and I’ll leave it where I left it back then.

In 2018, during the third Test against South Africa in Cape Town, Australia’s opening batter, Cameron Bancroft, was caught on TV using sandpaper against one side of the cricket ball.

An investigation revealed the tampering was planned by the captain, Steve Smith, and vice-captain, David Warner. Both, as well as Bancroft, received bans from international and local cricket.

Fast-forward to now – and former Australian batter Usman Khawaja alleged in his autobiography, Sabr: Finding My Way in Cricket and Life, that the use of sandpaper was widespread.

Khawaja alleged the tampering happened earlier in the series at Port Elizabeth and that the entire team knew about it. Cummins has not commented – until now.

The Australian cricket captain, Pat Cummins, is to speak for the first time on the sandpaper scandal since allegations about ball tampering from his former teammate Usman Khawaja.

Cummins posted to social media that he would speak to reporters on Friday morning at Cricket NSW’s headquarters in Sydney.

I’m training at Cricket Central tomorrow morning before the Blues play in the Shield match.

Happy to speak with any and all media about the events of this week at 9.30 am.

I’ve taken some time to try and better understand the long list and full extent of Uzzy’s allegations so I can respond properly.

Afterwards please stay and support the Blues!