David Warner adds another explosive claim to Sandpapergate drama

The fallout from Usman Khawaja’s book Sabr continues to rock Australian cricket years after Sandpapergate, with David Warner now lobbing an accusation of his own at Cricket Australia. Khawaja’s allegation that everyone in the Australian dressing room knew that sandpaper was being used on the ball in the Newlands Test match against South Africa has reignited a controversy that had rocked Australian cricket earlier.

It led to a press conference from Pat Cummins who refuted the claim that the bowler’s group knew anything about sandpaper being used on the ball, and that Khawaja’s claims were not true. “When he says ‘we all knew’, if by that he means that we knew sandpaper was going out on the field he’s 100% wrong,” Cummins said on Friday in a presser.

“I’ve said that consistently for the last eight years. I did not know that was happening. But, I think Usman actually says things that are actually far more serious than that. “He says that I and others were architects of a scheme to ball tamper with sandpaper.

That’s complete and utter nonsense. I was genuinely shocked this week when I found out that Usman admitted that he told Cam [Bancroft] to be careful when using sandpaper,” said Cummins yesterday. A post shared by David Warner (@davidwarner31) Warner had earlier said that Cummins’ comments were essentially the Australian captain throwing his former player ‘under the bus’.

Then after the press conference, Warner took to his Instagram and alleged that Cricket Australia, in their review of the incident, did not even question the bowling group of Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon, who had collectively as a group said that they had no idea about the use of sandpaper.

“As far as l am aware, CA did not interview Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc or Nathan Lyon in their 2018 investigation,” Warner posted on Instagram on Saturday. “If that’s correct, then how can CA push the idea that the bowlers didn’t know?

It looks like they had decided who they wanted to blame from the very beginning, ran a shoddy investigation to serve the purpose and now they want to maintain the false narrative that the bowlers had no idea. That stinks of a cover up,” added Warner on his social media.

Warner, Cameron Bancroft and Steve Smith were the only players sanctioned for the incident by Cricket Australia. While Cummins and Cricket Australia have chosen to stick to their narrative, Warner was the one cricketer from the group who immediately came out in support of Khawaja when the allegations came to light and backed the former left-handed batter.

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