In his own words: Usman Khawaja’s book exposes rawness of Australian cricket’s Sandpapergate

Usman Khawaja’s book, Sabr, lifts an explosive lid on Australian cricket’s Sandpapergate and takes fans right through his world as a top-flight and, at times, controversial international cricketer.

The plot was hatched before the now infamous 2018 series in South Africa began. Khawaja doesn’t say in his book who said it, but the intent was spelled out at a team meeting.

“We need to get the ball shifting when it gets old. I don’t care what you have to do or how, but we need to get it moving in the air.”

And it was put into place during the second test.

“The idea of using sandpaper immediately (and only) after the breaks was hatched. We all knew that the umpire would drop the ball on the boundary as we went out onto the field,” he wrote.

“Bancroft, who was only six games into his Test career and maybe wanting to fit in, said, ‘I’ll do it’.

“Steve Smith put his hands up and said ‘I don’t want to know anything about this’, and walked out the room.

“Of course I bloody knew what was happening with the sandpaper.”

By the third test, with the series tied 1-1, the stakes were high.

“I saw one of the coaches approach Bancroft who was sitting right next to me .... ‘Bangers, whatever you’re doing, we need more of it,” Khawaja wrote.

“I saw Bangers pick up a piece of sandpaper and put it in his pocket ... (he) had been smart up to now — he’d only been doing it during the break.”

South Africa’s television cameras saw what they saw - and so then did the rest of the cricketing world. It ended Smith’s captaincy, David Warner’s leadership duties and Bancroft’s time as Warner’s opening partner, with the trio copping harsh sanctions.

‘CA did a pretty unthorough investigation ... It was almost as if they didn’t want to find out the whole truth,” Khawaja said.

‘I was ready to fight for the three guys who’d taken the blame. I believe that CA investigators knew this ... which is why I never got interviewed.”

Khawaja had his own controversies through his career, including his public show of support for Palestine via a message on his playing spikes.

“I’d been posting stuff on social media — to the dismay of many people. It was stuff people didn’t want to see, but I needed to do more... the only place I knew where lots of people would actually see it was a Test match... for some reason I thought ‘Why don’t I write a message on my shoes?’

“I knew that people would call me antisemitic. But I knew that if I’d said nothing... I’d regret it forever.”

He bore some of the brunt of abuse after the Johnny Bairstow stumping at Lords in 2023 as well, copping racists comments as the Australians made their way through the ground’s famed Long Room.

“They were in unison, swearing, calling us ‘F...ing this’, and ‘F...... that’, ‘C.... this’. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” Khawaja wrote.

“Then as I walked on, and I heard someone else say, ‘Shut up, you Paki,’ I lost it. I don’t know who this was exactly. I told security, ‘Get this guy out of here!”

With pressure on his place in the team in what would be his final summer 12 months ago, Khawaja suffered back spasms while fielding during the first Ashes Test in Perth. Ultimately, the opener was unable to bat in either inning of the match - forcing Travis Head to the top of the order where his match-winning knock cemented the move to opener.

“(The media) blamed golf for my back. It was something I didn’t totally disagree with, because the workload from all the balls I hit playing golf wouldn’t have helped. But where was the context? I’d done the same preparation before the first Test in Australia for four years straight. How was I to know that my back was going to go.”