Pat Cummins was asked about sandpaper again on the eve of a Test match, and this time the question came with a publication date attached. Usman Khawaja’s autobiography, Sabr: Finding My Way in Cricket and Life, lands on 10 November — 448 pages from Penguin Books Australia, written without a ghostwriter, with no advance copies released — and it contains a chapter on the 2018 ball-tampering scandal at Newlands. Khawaja told Cummins that himself, over coffee in Brisbane, before the squad flew to South Africa.
Australia’s captain, speaking in Durban ahead of Friday’s first Test at Kingsmead, said he had not asked to see a word of it.
“Uz gave me a buzz a few weeks back that he is releasing a book,” Cummins said. “He didn’t go into too much detail, just basically gave me the heads-up that he is doing a book and, as always, no worries. Tell your story. It’s fine.”
A heads-up, not a negotiation
Cricket Australia chief executive Todd Greenberg received the same courtesy call, confirming he and Cummins were both briefed before the tour began. The timing is deliberate on Khawaja’s part: the book arrives ten days after the series ends, not during it.
Cummins, who has captained Australia since 2021, declined to speculate on what the chapter contains, pointing questions back at its author — “you would have to ask him” — and leaning on the fact that the episode has been examined to exhaustion.
“It’s obviously a long time ago and all the investigations, everything was done back then and we answered every question a million times,” he said. “It was dealt with then and all I can say is that as a group, we have moved on and we are very happy with the last eight to nine years how we have been as a group and evolved. Obviously my focus is on captaining the cricket team.”
Khawaja retired from international cricket in January after the Sydney Ashes Test, closing a 15-year career that produced 6,206 Test runs and 16 centuries. He played all four Tests of the 2018 series in South Africa, which makes him a first-hand witness rather than a commentator — and he remains close to David Warner, whom Cricket Australia’s investigation identified as the scandal’s instigator.
Why the bowlers’ version still matters
The reason a single chapter can still generate heat is that the official account has been challenged once already, from inside the dressing room.
Cricket Australia’s 2018 review concluded that nobody in the touring party beyond Cameron Bancroft, Warner and Steve Smith knew sandpaper had been taken onto the field. Bancroft was banned for nine months, Smith and Warner for 12 each, with Warner additionally barred from leadership roles for life. Coach Darren Lehmann resigned. Australia lost the series 3-1.
In May 2021, Bancroft reopened it. Asked whether the bowlers had known, he said that “what I did benefits bowlers and the awareness around that, probably, is self-explanatory.” Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon — the four who bowled in that Cape Town Test — responded with a joint statement insisting they had no idea a foreign substance was in play until the images appeared on the ground’s big screen.
All five of those men are on this tour. So is Smith, back in South Africa for the first time since 2018. Any account from a player who was in that room is therefore not a history lesson; it is testimony that touches the current XI.
Cummins framed 2018 as a line in the sport’s sand rather than only Australia’s. “After that, I think pretty much every Test team in the world felt like they’d made some adjustments,” he said.
Three Tests, and the venue that waits
The cricket itself offers Australia little room for distraction. South Africa, led by Temba Bavuma, beat them in the 2025 World Test Championship final and took the recent ODI series 2-1. Cameron Green is ruled out of the first Test through injury. Kingsmead’s forecast points to cloud across the opening two days and the heaviest rain risk on day three.
Then the schedule does something a publisher could not have arranged: after Gqeberha from 18 October, the series finishes at Newlands on 27-31 October, on the ground where Bancroft was caught by the SuperSport cameras. The book follows eleven days later.
Cummins has already told his players they will not be navigating any of it alone. “If the crowd gets rowdy or whatever, if someone needs an extra helping hand, we’re around,” he said. “To be honest, it’s so long ago and we, as a group, move on from things pretty quickly. It hasn’t taken up too much of our time.”
With tours of India and England to come inside the next year, Australia would prefer that to remain true. Whether it does depends on a chapter nobody outside Penguin’s offices has read.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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