Graeme Hick, Australia’s batting coach during the 2018 tour of South Africa, called Usman Khawaja’s sandpaper-gate claims “absolutely false”, saying he did not know anything.
Khawaja in his autobiography, Sabr, claimed that whole of the team knew about Australia using sandpaper to tamper the ball during the third Test. However, only David Warner, Steve Smith, and Cameron Bancroft were punished for the wrongdoing.
“Khawaja puts it simply: ‘It was all of us. Not the batters, not the bowlers, not the staff. All of us.’ To me what Khawaja is implying here is absolutely false,” Hick told Sydney Morning Herald.
“In regard to any discussions around the ball-tampering in Port Elizabeth or Cape Town that took place, I will say in true honesty that I did not hear or know anything,” he added.
Australian bowlers in that Test, Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Nathan Lyon, and Josh Hazlewood, had said that they were unaware of the plan in a joint statement in 2021.
While Cummins is yet to comment on the re-ignited issue, Cricket Australia chief David Boon backed him to continue his job as captain.
“We absolutely support Pat,” Boon told The Australian on Thursday.
“He’s been an exemplary captain, he’s led the team with integrity and very successfully over the period of time that he’s been captain, so there’s no question of our confidence in him continuing on in that fact.”
Boon said Australia needed to look forward, not back.
“I respect (Usman’s) point of view and his recollections of what occurred, and they’re his, but we don’t want to get into a ‘he said, she said’ argument,” he said.
“There are going to be supporters, there’s going to be other guys that don’t recollect the same thing, so I don’t see a purpose.”
(Inputs from AFP)
Published on Nov 12, 2026
