Usman Khawaja says Steve Smith urged him to stay silent about ball-tampering

Usman Khawaja says he was once afraid he might never feel welcome in Australia’s dressing room again after the 2018 ball-tampering scandal. In social media videos posted ahead of his book launch, the retired Australian batter revisited the events that led to bans for Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft, and explained why he says he did not speak publicly at the time. Khawaja maintains that knowledge of sandpaper being used on the ball was not confined to the players who were punished. He says the practice was known within the team during the Cape Town Test and the preceding match in Port Elizabeth, and argues that responsibility for what happened should have been shared. Those are his claims; the article notes that Australian bowlers have repeatedly denied knowing about the tampering. In his account, Khawaja wrote down what had happened shortly after the Cape Town match. He says he planned to tell the media what he knew after the sanctions were announced, because he considered the penalties imposed on his teammates too severe. But, he claims, Smith persuaded him not to go public, saying he intended to take responsibility himself. Khawaja says the pair argued, but Smith was determined to shoulder the blame. Khawaja has also alleged that Bancroft used sandpaper during the earlier Test, and described confronting Nathan Lyon after Lyon dropped the ball on South African batter AB de Villiers following a run-out. He further suggested that he missed out on the interim captaincy at the end of the series because Australia was not ready for a “brown captain”. The revelations have revived questions about why Khawaja waited eight years to share his version of events. He says he had tried to approach the episode as a team matter from the beginning, but now wants to challenge the idea that the three sanctioned players alone should carry the consequences. His forthcoming autobiography is set to offer more detail on the dispute and his strained feelings about the response inside the team.