Australia captain Pat Cummins said the team is comfortable with Usman Khawaja telling his story in an upcoming autobiography, which will be the first by an Australian player who took part in the 2018 Cape Town Test at the centre of the sandpaper scandal.
Khawaja told Cummins he was writing the book without a ghostwriter. It is due next month, after Australia’s first Test tour of South Africa since that notorious match. How much detail it will contain about the ball-tampering affair remains unclear.
Cricket Australia’s investigation led to year-long bans for then-captain Steve Smith and David Warner, while Cameron Bancroft was suspended for nine months. The governing body found that no other player knew about the plan to use sandpaper on the ball. Australia’s bowlers also said they had not known that a foreign substance would be taken onto the field.
Asked before the first Test in Durban whether Khawaja had said how much of the episode he would discuss, Cummins said the book’s contents were a question for its author. The captain said the investigation had been completed years ago and the team had moved on. He added that he had no objection to a former teammate telling his account.
The 2018 series featured confrontations on and off the field. Cummins called it intense and said many Test teams changed their approach afterward. Australia’s current group, he said, is different from the side that played that tour.