Usman Khawaja insists he has not “thrown anyone under the bus” after excerpts from his autobiography claimed the entire Australia team were aware of the ball-tampering scheme on the tour of South Africa in 2018.
Batter Khawaja, who retired from international cricket earlier this year, said he had made a “promise” to David Warner – one of three players banned in the wake of ‘Sandpapergate’, along with Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft – that he would “tell the truth”.
The bowling attack for the Cape Town Test – Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Nathan Lyon and Josh Hazlewood – released a statement in 2021 denying any knowledge of the plot, while Cricket Australia has always asserted only Smith, Warner and Bancroft knew about it.
Khawaja said in a video on Instagram: “I haven’t thrown anyone under the bus.
“The guys that are currently in the team right now and the other people that were there on the South African tour, including me, we’re not the victims.
“[Bancroft, Warner and Smith] took the blame for all of us, and they’re the victims – people telling them that they’re cheats, getting nailed by the crowd, public humiliation.
“I made a promise to my childhood friend David Warner that I would tell the truth, so he could tell a story. I’m absolutely 100 per cent unapologetic for that. These three guys deserve justice and I haven’t pointed fingers at anyone.
“I’m still searching for what I was searching for all those years ago. For us, me included, to take the blame together as a team, so we can all move on from this once and for all.
“You know what? I would do it again in a heartbeat.”
Khawaja: Smith talked me out of coming clean
Josh Hazlewood, Nathan Lyon, Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins issued a joint statement in 2021 denying knowledge of the scandal
Khawaja said he wanted to come clean in 2018, only to be talked down by Smith, and then again in 2021 after Bancroft said in a newspaper interview that it was “probably self-explanatory” that the bowling attack were aware of the ball-tampering scheme.
The 39-year-old said: “[Smith] being the man and leader he was talked me out of it. He wanted to take the blame. I argued but he was having none of it. That’s the first time I tried to come out.”
On wanting to fess up five years ago, only to then feel he couldn’t once Cummins, Starc, Hazlewood and Lyon issued their statement, Khawaja added: “I wasn’t going to go to war with those guys back then. I just wasn’t comfortable. That’s the truth.
“How was I ever supposed to bring this up when I knew some of my team-mates didn’t want to talk about it? I knew everything I did or said influenced and affected the team.
“I was always conscious of putting my team first. What I say now isn’t a reflection of them anymore. Now my words don’t influence the team at all. I speak for myself.”
Bancroft keen to ‘move on’ from from ball-tampering saga
Bancroft was one of the three players banned in the wake of ‘Sandpapergate’
Another of Khawaja’s claims was that fellow batter Bancroft had volunteered to use sandpaper on the ball in the game before the infamous Cape Town Test, which took place in Port Elizabeth, now known as Gqeberha.
Bancroft – who has only made two appearances for Australia since ‘Sandpapergate’, both in the 2019 Ashes, and recently said he accepted a Test return was unlikely at this stage of his career – is keen to “move on” from the ball-tampering story, according to his Beau Casson, his coach at state side Western Australia.
Speaking after Bancroft scored 32 for WA against England in Perth, as the tourists warmed up for a three-match ODI series against Australia from Friday, Casson said: “The situation’s a long time ago. He’s keen to move on and let his bat do the talking.
“You can’t control everything. The way he’s handled it, over the past couple of weeks, and over the years gone by, it speaks volumes of the way he’s done that.
“He certainly sets the example of how to go about being a professional cricketer.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: skynews.com
