Pat Cummins’ one-word answer leaves Sandpapergate with an awkward reality after marathon press conference - The Independent

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After an hour and eight minutes in front of the Australian media at Cricket Central in Sydney, Pat Cummins gave one last smile and walked away from Sandpapergate for good. I’ll stand here and answer your questions until you have no more left to ask, he had said at the start; then I’m never talking about that day again.

Most of the questions were tangential to the scandal itself or even wholly irrelevant, in the case of one reporter who asked for Cummins’ thoughts on up-and-coming fast bowler Mahli Beardman. Not now, mate.

But after Usman Khawaja’s claim that “we all knew”, really there was only one question that needed answering, eight years on from Cape Town. Did Cummins, and the rest of the Australian dressing room, know their team was tampering with the ball during that series in South Africa?

At first, Cummins steered carefully to the same wording put out in his joint statement with fellow bowlers Mitchell Starc, Nathan Lyon and Josh Hazlewood in 2021, when they insisted that they “did not know a foreign substance was taken onto the field to alter the condition of the ball”.

Cummins began with a prepared statement and framed Khawaja’s accusations in precisely the same way, saying: “When he says ‘we all knew’ – if by that he means we knew sandpaper was going out on the field, he’s 100 per cent wrong. I said that consistently for the last eight years. I did not know that was happening.”

The Independent understands that is likely to be true, that very few players or staff were aware Cameron Bancroft had a piece of sandpaper in his pocket in that particular session on day three of the third Test.

But did Cummins and the rest of his teammates, and coaching staff, know illegal ball-tampering was going on during the series? Did they know about tampering in the previous Test in Port Elizabeth, as Khawaja claims? Was it really only three guys – Bancroft, Steve Smith and David Warner – who carried out a plot without the knowledge of anyone else in the room?

After finishing his prepared words, Cummins was immediately asked just that. Is your version of events that the three people who’ve been dealt with by Cricket Australia were the only people who knew about what happened?

Again, Cummins framed his answer. “Yeah, if we’re talking about taking sandpaper out [onto the pitch], all I can say is, I did not know that was happening. I’m not sure if it was more than those three, but I did not know.”

Another journalist jumped in, pointing out that Cummins was making “a very specific denial about that day”. Did he know more generally that sandpaper was being used on the ball? Did he know that there was a project to tamper with the ball within that Australian cricket team?

Cummins framed again. “You might need to remind me of both questions, but in terms of, did I know sandpaper was going to be taken out onto the field? No, never … I was not aware.”

The conversation moved on, but the reporter was not letting go and asked again. Did you know that the team was using unfair methods to get the ball to reverse swing?

Cummins decided to answer a slightly different question. “Yeah, so you just reminded me of your previous question around a grand masterplan. There was no masterplan about using illegal methods … There’s no grand plan, there’s no team meeting, there’s no bowlers saying, ‘This is what must happen’. I think there’s natural progressions that get you there, and… was there a second part [to your question]?”

Did you know the team was using methods outside the rules?

“I’d heard… there’s a lot of conversations in changing rooms around how to get reverse swing. Most of them, totally fine. Like you’re always trying to perfect it. We just did it in South Africa a couple of weeks ago. It might be, do we come around the wicket? Starcy’s very good at hitting one side of the ball, he’ll try and bowl into the rough. We’re talking about methods all the time. There’s definitely been times we’ve… people tell stories of what they’ve seen, what’s happened, other methods that other teams apparently use, which again I’m happy to talk about. But at no time did I hear, ‘Here’s an illegal method, let’s make sure we do this and go out in the field.’ No.”

Finally, he was given no wiggle room. Yes or no, Pat: were you aware of any plans at any stage on that tour of South Africa in 2018 to tamper with the ball by whatever means?

Cummins ran his tongue around dry lips before answering. “No.”

There it was, the answer they’d been waiting for. Now it was Cummins against Khawaja, my word against yours, and it was hard to see how Khawaja could ever come out on top against the highly respected Australian captain, someone so instrumental in the team’s modern reform.

Perhaps Khawaja has not helped himself, being specific about certain damning incidents in his book but naming no names. While Khawaja shrunk in the face of media scrutiny this week, cancelling a host of interviews as the pressure ratcheted up, Cummins stood tall and square-shouldered, batting away everything the press had to offer.

Yet it is worth remembering that this is not only Khawaja’s word. Warner, whose chequered reputation has never recovered from the scandal, has backed childhood friend Khawaja’s claims and did so again after Cummins’ press conference. “He was very well prepared,” Warner said of Cummins’ answers. “I stick by Uzzie and what he’s written in that book. It is the truth. The captain today threw Uzzie under the bus.”

There was Bancroft, who was asked by the Guardian in 2021 whether the bowlers were aware of his ball-tampering. “Uh … yeah, look, I think, yeah, I think it’s pretty probably self-explanatory,” he said.

There was David Saker, Australia’s bowling coach at the time, who said: “There was a lot of people to blame. It could have been me to blame, it could have been someone else. It could have been stopped and it wasn’t, which is unfortunate … We all know that we made a monumental mistake.”

There were recent comments by back-up spin bowler Jon Holland, who revealed how the team gathered at the team hotel to discuss who would “take the blame” and that Smith, Warner and Bancroft were “hung out to dry”. Cummins said he did not recall a meeting where blame was ever discussed.

Chadd Sayers, a bowler on the tour, also endorsed Khawaja’s account last week. “Everything he says is accurate,” Sayers said. More will, no doubt, emerge in the coming weeks, months and years. “I don’t have anything further to add, at this stage,” Bancroft said when questioned at an airport this week, before shooting a sly grin to the camera.

One of Cummins’ lines of argument was that cricket fans aren’t privy to international dressing rooms and don’t understand how a ball is managed on the field. It is, he insisted, entirely possible for bowlers not to know exactly how their fellow fielders are looking after the ball.

Yet that point has been doubted by a raft of experienced cricketers, including former Australia captain Michael Clarke, who said in 2021: “Can you imagine that ball being thrown back to the bowler and the bowler not knowing about it? Please.” Former fast bowler Mitchell Johnson wrote in a newspaper column this week: “My gut has always told me what Khawaja is now saying. As a bowler, the ball is your main tool. It’s your baby. You check it, you shine it, you take care of it every ball, every over … The idea that a ball could be scuffed with sandpaper and the bowlers wouldn’t notice didn’t make sense to me.”

Cummins talked about how tampering was once widespread but said he’d only seen it once himself, in a Shield game when a player took a bottle cap onto the field. He talked about why sandpaper was a normal tool in players’ bags. He pointed out the sheer size of the dressing room areas at Newlands Stadium in an effort to explain how bowlers could have been kept in the dark.

He brought jokes – “great to see so many of you here for day three of the Shield game” – but was also serious at times, and was clearly angered by cameras outside his house this week which captured a private argument with his wife Becky. He accused his friend Khawaja of being “casual with his life and other lives”, and took strongest issue with Khawaja’s assertion that you have to be white to be Australia captain.

At the end, someone quipped that they’d just witnessed the longest press conference in Australian cricket history. Yet amid the questions, answers, jokes and vagaries, only one moment really mattered. Cummins said “no”, he never knew about any form of ball-tampering during that series in South Africa. Not everyone agrees with his recollection. Cummins says he has closed the book, but this story isn’t over.