Support for Khawaja as explosive new claims reveal how Australia snuck sandpaper off the field

Detailed summary

Former Australian fast bowler Chadd Sayers’ memories ball-tampering practises on the 2018 tour of South Africa align with Usman Khawaja’s, and David Warner’s manager has called for Cricket Australia to release the report that led to three players being suspended.

Former Australian bowler Chadd Sayers has blown the sandpapergate ball-tampering scandal wide open, backing Usman Khawaja’s assertion that the whole Australian Test cricket squad in South Africa in 2018 knew of the plot to scratch the match ball and that they started doing it in the Port Elizabeth Test – one game before Cameron Bancroft was caught in Cape Town.

“I’m pretty confident to say that everyone knew,” Sayers told radio station SEN, for whom he commentated Sunday’s one-day international between Australia and England.

Sayers, who did not play in Port Elizabeth — now Gqeberha — or Cape Town but made his debut in the following Test in Johannesburg also revealed that, as a fringe player in the squad, he came onto the field with drinks at a break in play earlier in that series and collected sandpaper from Bancroft and disposed of it. He said that happened before TV cameras caught Bancroft trying to conceal sandpaper down his pants in Cape Town.

“[The sandpaper] was given to me to take off. That wasn’t planned or anything. I was just the player who took the drinks out at the time. I recall it was a wicket or a drinks break after tea,” Sayers said.

Asked when he became aware during that series that sandpaper was being used on the ball, Sayers replied: “In Port Elizabeth … it was used in two Test matches, and there were discussions in change rooms of how we were going get the ball to reverse and what was going to be used ... there was numerous conversations of it around the change rooms.”

He said, like Bancroft, he was a young player trying to fit into the Australian side at the time.

“I believe everyone in that side knew what was going on and what was being used,” Sayers said.

Sayers said he did not want to take sides in the saga, but was relieved that Khawaja had revealed the truth in his autobiography, Sabr, released last week.

Although keen to emphasise his neutrality in the debate that is tearing at Australian cricket, Sayers said he found it difficult to watch Test…

Opening of the article, excerpted from The Sydney Morning Herald. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.