Cummins’ forward defence has left Khawaja in no-man’s land

Bloody hell. Shots fired!

Lots of them. All coming from Pat Cummins at Cricket Central on Friday, coming off the sightboard and steaming in from the Randwick end before unleashing a series of thunderbolts aimed right at the head of Usman Khawaja – and hitting him.

“Usman says that I and others were architects of a scheme to ball tamper with sandpaper,” the skipper said of Khawaja’s claims in his autobiography. “That’s complete and utter nonsense.”

As to Khawaja’s claim that he warned Cameron Bancroft against using sandpaper?

“That’s not the Usman that I know. It’s not the Usman that I think has been part of a team that’s helped rebuild the Australian cricket culture over the last eight years … Usman’s a friend, but friends aren’t casual with each other’s lives and reputations. In his book, Uzzie’s been casual with my life and the lives of many others.”

Truly, right then, Cummins was just clearing his throat. For there was more, much more. But all of it had the same theme: Usman’s talking out his arse, and should pull his bloody head in. He needs to go into a roomful of mirrors and take a good look at himself.

What should the rest of us make of it? I can only speak for myself. Going into Friday’s press conference, I thought Cummins was going to come out defensive and blinking in the sunlight. It was inconceivable Khawaja had got it completely wrong.

Had the retired batsman said that “it was all of them” that knew, then yes, there is room for doubt. But he didn’t. He said, “It was all of us.”

But against that, Cummins could not have been more emphatic, nor so genuinely outraged. The thrust of it was, “How DARE Uzzie say this shit, when he bloody well knows that while he knew, the rest of us bloody well didn’t?”

And, to my eyes, he appeared credible and honest. It was a very strong exercise in leadership from a captain exerting his authority.

Where to for Khawaja from here? He needs to piss or get off the pot. If he has proof that Cummins, the rest of the bowlers and everyone else was in on it – texts, WhatsApps, emails – now is the time to produce it.

On the money

Meantime, regarding a subject I do know a fair bit about, Khawaja defence’s against the comments he only revealed the controversy to drive up book sales broadly stands up.

“I could have written blah blah blah blah blah throughout the whole book, and I’d be paid the same,” he said. “And before you even start to think about royalties and book sales and all this other jabber, I have to sell so many books for royalties to even kick in, I don’t reckon I will ever get there. And even if it does. It’s pennies. Anyone who’s written a book will tell you the same.”

In terms of not making a whole lot more money for his revelations than he otherwise would have, he’s broadly right. The way it works in the publishing industry is that the author usually gets about 10 per cent of the cover-price. So, on a $50 book, $5 ends up in your pocket. (Very roughly, the publisher gets $20, the bookseller gets $20, and the truck-driver and printers share another $5 between them.)

If the author is savvy, they will have negotiated a clause in their contract which ensures that percentage goes up to 12.5 for every book sale after the first 15,000. So, a bit more than $6. Let’s say Sabr sells 35,000 copies. That’s a good pay-day of around $200,000.

But, here’s the exception. When there is huge interest in a book and it’s guaranteed to sell huge, you can have several publishers going after you, and they may sacrifice huge chunks of their $20 share to get you over the line. That is what happened in Khawaja’s case.

Did he promise to the publishers to unload on Sandpapergate? I am reliably informed he did not. The fact he did is a bonus to them. But the advance he received was for so much more than $200,000 that he will indeed be very lucky to “earn out” – that is, make more money than his initial advance – for the revelations.

And for what it’s worth, I suspect Khawaja’s book won’t sell huge numbers, however good it is. One of the best books I ever did was on the fight between Packer and Murdoch for control of professional rugby, The Rugby War, where again, player was turned against player and allegations of lying were everywhere. That book, like this book, documented a wound on the game’s soul, and that proved to be a very hard sell, with sales only moderate.

Played and missed

Against that?

Against that, Khawaja’s naivete on the whole issue has been a wonder to behold. He is a seasoned public figure and has been around in press conferences for the better part of two decades. And he was taken by surprise at the reaction? #FFS!

There he was on the ABC’s 7.30 on Tuesday evening – in the midst of a towering inferno of cricketing rage across the country, with sirens blaring and every man-jack at Cricket Australia manning a hose – and he said to Sarah Ferguson: “I’m not here to inflame the situation any more.”

Mate, you can’t say that right after you’ve torched what’s left of the 2018 team’s fraternity right to the ground. They could put the ashes in an urn and compete for a competition in the hereafter for cricketing hell on earth.

You’ve made your revelations and on one count, bravo – at least your version of the truth is out there. But to walk away from the book’s promotional activity, ’cos you don’t want to play any more, and don’t like the tenor of the media’s questions? What the hell else did you think was going to happen?

Saying, as you did, “I haven’t pointed fingers at anyone”? And, “I haven’t thrown anyone under the bus”? That’s part of the problem. You have in fact pointed fingers at everyone, and thrown everyone under the bus. If you were going to do this, you had to actually name names and offer proof.

We need an independent inquiry

As to whether there should be a further inquiry, I am sorry everyone, I am just going to have to go with me on this one (as Billy Birmingham said, famously channelling Richie Benaud.)

As TFF wrote in 2021 when talking about the Tim Paine scandal: “This was the same 2018 CA that faithfully told us that it had no doubt that after looking into Sandpapergate it was confident that the corruption at the core of the team’s soul was limited to just three players. I found that hard to believe at the time, especially when the two-day investigation limited to the events of Cape Town was clearly designed not to uncover the truth but sweep it under CA’s notably lumpy carpet.

“After all, does it seem likely to you that three batsmen organised doctoring the ball, and no one told the bowlers? Think again on Cameron Bancroft’s comments earlier this year: ‘Yeah, obviously what I did benefits bowlers and the awareness around that, probably, is self-explanatory …’

“Now that we know that CA were happy to hide the Paine imbroglio, it clearly casts even more doubt on what they knew about how much further the rot might have spread in the team. If the new board of Cricket Australia really wants to prove they are the new broom the game needed in 2018 but clearly didn’t get, let them now be truly transparent and try to get to the bottom of that whole disastrous affair.”

I repeat: the question is, should Cricket Australia do now what they should have done then, and conduct a more wide-ranging inquiry? Our lines are open. If I was CA, I’d do exactly as they have done, and make every attempt to move on. But such is the fallout from this catastrophic imbroglio that they may now have no choice – and it would have to be done externally, not internally.

We won’t cop cheating

Did anyone come out well from the whole thing?

Yup. I reckon we Australians did. Let the word go forth from this place and this time to Australian sporting teams of now, and in the future: we, the people, accept gamesmanship. We don’t accept cheating.

And yes, there appears to have been all kinds of methods used to make the ball swing over the decades, from perspiration, to Brylcreem, to stepping on the ball. They all fit broadly under the title of gamesmanship.

But sandpaper? No. Just no.

There is a line, and while we may not know much about the intricacies of cricket, using sandpaper on the ball is unfairly and squarely on the other side of that line. As a people, we might be rough enough to go with extreme gamesmanship – see the outrageous practice of sledging, which we invented and is widely accepted – but we still won’t cop cheating.

What they said

Usman Khawaja tipping the bucket in his newly released autobiography: “It was all of us. Not the batters, not the bowlers, not the staff. All of us.” And that’s when the trouble started.

Khawaja: “Even in the change rooms when I was talking to them after the game. I said, ‘Take this as a team’. We did this as a team. We knew what was going on, and we have to take it as a team, and so I was always of that stance. Obviously, it didn’t work that way, and those three guys got crucified.”

David Warner: “Uzzie, I throw my full support behind you. I thank you for what you’ve done. It’s 100 per cent accurate what you’ve said. Now everyone knows the truth.”

Australian skipper Pat Cummins, steaming in from the Randwick end: “Usman says that I and others were architects of a scheme to ball tamper with sandpaper. That’s complete and utter nonsense.”

Cricket Australia chairman David Boon: “I respect [Usman’s] point of view and his recollections of what occurred, and they’re his, but we don’t want to get into a he said, she said argument.” Who is the “she” here, David?

Former English captain Michael Vaughan: “So we finally now know the most hidden secret in the game … all the Aussie team knew about the sandpaper … 8 yrs later it all comes out … no shit Sherlock … now can we just move on …”

Khawaja, in response to the backlash: “I haven’t thrown anyone under the bus. The guys that are currently in the team right now and the other people that were there on the South African tour, including me, we’re not the victims. These three guys took the blame for all of us. They’re the victims. People telling them that they’re cheats, getting nailed by the crowd, public humiliation.”

Travis Head: “Move on. I think the public are ready to move on … I think the Test team has moved a long way, the people that were in charge of Cricket Australia in 2018, a lot has changed there. Some personnel and leadership have moved on and the team has come a long way … I think it’s had its time and everyone is ready to move on.”

Mitchell Starc: “My recollection hasn’t changed from what we said in 2021. We weren’t aware anything was taken on the field to be tampered with. We saw it on the big screen in Cape Town. I [am] sticking to what I said five years ago. Clearly there’s different versions from different people, and I’ll leave it where I left it back then.”

CA chief executive Todd Greenberg: “You end up at the same intersection where one person’s version of events contradict the others, and I’m not sure what outcome people are searching for.”

Andrew Forrest wants the Formula E series to go head-to-head with that “old dinosaur … noisy, smoky, smelly” Formula One: “This is about serious, savage competition. There’s only one other competition I’ve seen which is more cutthroat, more deadly, and more dangerous than this sport, and that’s fossil fuel.” In any genuine head-to-head between the electric cars and the dinosaurs, the dinosaurs would be left for dead.

Blades Brown, who at 19 became the youngest PGA Tour winner in 88 years: “It hasn’t set in just yet, I guess, the magnitude of being a PGA Tour winner. I just go back to five-year-old Blades that was watching the TV and watching Tiger Woods and all those great players win major championships, and to think that I’m now in a similar spot with having won a PGA Tour event is mind-blowing.” Yes, I know. It’s started.

Wallabies coach Les Kiss after the loss to England: “We just didn’t get our game going at all.”

Spencer Leniu on Rugby League World Cup disparity: “Let’s be honest, our little nations carried this WC. Yet we are paid $850 a game [compared] to the Aussies [who get] 30/40k for the tournament.” Very fair point. They needed to have better representation at the bargaining table. Samoa and Tonga would be worth it at 10 times the price.

Team of the Week

Usman Khawaja and Pat Cummins. Between them, they’ve certainly helped distract Australia’s mind from woes of the economy!

The Pullman Five. Have been cleared of criminal conduct. More on that next week!

Sydney Swans. Take on Geelong in an AFLW final today.

Wallabies. Take on Scotland in the early hours of Monday at Murrayfield. We need a win!

Australia. Take on New Zealand in the finals of both the men’s and women’s rugby League “World Cup”.

Michael Carrick. Dumped as Manchester United manager. Seeing as you ask, out of the 20 English Premier League teams, only five have the same manager now as they did two years ago!

Georgia Clayden. Gold Coast have delisted their AFLW player just weeks before she gives birth.

Raheim “RJ” Brown Jr. The16 year old is lighting up the NBL.

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