Khawaja says Australia used sandpaper in Port Elizabeth too, and Lehmann doesn’t think everybody knew
Usman Khawaja says the whole 2018 Australia squad knew about the ball-tampering plot, and that sandpaper was used a Test before Cape Town. Cricket Australia is standing by its findings.
Nov 8, 2026
For eight years the official story of Cape Town 2018 has had three names in it: Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft. Usman Khawaja now says it should have had every name in the Australian dressing room.
“It was all of us. Not the batters, not the bowlers, not the staff. All of us,” Khawaja told the Sydney Morning Herald, in an interview tied to his memoir Sabr, which has a chapter on the scandal. The claims were published on 7 November.
Sandpaper in Port Elizabeth first
The more damaging detail is about the Test before Cape Town. Khawaja says sandpaper was already in use at St George’s Park in Port Elizabeth, now Gqeberha. According to his account, there was talk about it in the dressing room during that match, Smith walked out saying he didn’t want to know, and Bancroft volunteered to use it in South Africa’s first innings.
That matters because Cricket Australia’s investigation found Smith, Warner and Bancroft were the only players who knew about the plan beforehand. Smith and Warner were banned for 12 months and Bancroft for nine. Smith lost the captaincy, and the coach, Darren Lehmann, was cleared of involvement but stood down at the end of the tour.
Khawaja also says Cricket Australia never interviewed him about any of it. That part isn’t new: he said the same in 2022, and Mitchell Marsh was reportedly not spoken to either. What’s new is that Khawaja is now saying what he would have told them.
Lehmann: “I don’t think everyone would have known”
Lehmann did not back Khawaja’s version. “I don’t think everyone would have known,” he told the ABC. “I can only speak to what I know.”
He was blunt about the wider game, though. Ball-tampering, he said, had been “a big part of the game of cricket”, and while it was obsolete now, “that doesn’t make it right either, but that’s the case, and we paid a heavy price for that.” He said the claims had brought back bad memories for him, for the players and for their families. “It’s been eight years. You get to a place where you move on, and I’ve moved on with my life.”
Cricket Australia’s answer was short. A spokesperson said the board remained “comfortable with the findings of our integrity process”, while adding that anyone with new information could still come forward.
Khawaja says he isn’t blaming individuals
Plenty of people read “all of us” as Khawaja dragging former team-mates into it. On Sunday Khawaja posted on Instagram that “all of us” was about the whole team sharing responsibility for what happened, not about pointing at individual players.
That is the line he says he took in 2018 as well. After Cape Town, he says, he spoke up in the dressing room and argued that the team should take responsibility together rather than leave Smith, Warner and Bancroft to carry it alone. It didn’t happen.
Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon, the frontline attack at Newlands, said in a joint statement in May 2021 that they had no knowledge of the plan, and asked for an end to the “rumour-mongering and innuendo”. That statement came after Bancroft said it was “self-explanatory” that the bowlers knew.
Why it lands now
Khawaja retired in January 2026 after 88 Tests, his last one the Sydney Test that completed a 4-1 Ashes win over England. He was cleared of wrongdoing in 2018 and has no career left to protect, which is partly why people are listening. It also leaves him open to the obvious question of why it took a book to say it.
Whatever happens next, Cricket Australia now has a former Test opener saying, on the record, that its own inquiry never asked him what he saw. That will be hard to wave away with a one-line statement.