Usman Khawaja breaks silence on Pat Cummins response to Sandpaper claims in new book

Résumé détaillé

Usman Khawaja has broken his silence after Test captain Pat Cummins’ extraordinary rejection of sandpaper claims in his new book.

Usman Khawaja has broken his silence after Australian Test captain Pat Cummins’ extraordinary rejection of sandpaper claims in his new book.

Cummins fronted an hour-long press conference on Friday, rebuking some of the accusations made in Khawaja’s autobiography Sabr, released last week.

While Khawaja has shifted back his media commitments in the wake of the initial storm following the release of his book, the former Test opener stood by what he published after being bailed up by The Australian at Sydney Airport.

“What I wrote in my book is what I wrote in my book and it’s the truth,” he said.

When The Australian asked if he was ‘lobbing a grenade and going silent’, Khawaja reaffirmed his support for WA batter Cameron Bancroft, one of the faces of the sandpaper saga.

“In the name of the great Cameron Bancroft, I’ve got nothing else to say,” Khawaja said.

Khawaja had not spoken publicly since Cummins’ extraordinary, lengthy press conference on Friday, where the Australian skipper labelled his former teammate’s claims as “complete and utter nonsense”.

Cummins had used the press conference to reject Khawaja’s views the entire Australian team knew sandpaper was being used in the field of play prior to Bancroft being caught on camera, illegally using a foreign object to rough up the ball.

“When he (Khawaja) says ‘we all knew’, if by that he means that we knew sandpaper was going out on the field, he is 100 per cent wrong,” Cummins said.

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