Cummins unfazed by Khawaja autobiography as Australia faces South Africa

Pat Cummins received a call from Usman Khawaja a few weeks before this interview, a heads-up that his former teammate was writing a book. The Australia captain took it in stride. When asked whether he worried the autobiography, due in November, might resurrect uncomfortable questions about the 2018 ball-tampering scandal, Cummins said no. He had moved on. The team had moved on. The investigations were done. The questions had been answered a million times.

On Friday, Australia will play South Africa in Durban for the first Test of a series that carries particular weight: it is their first return to South Africa since the scandal broke in Cape Town eight years ago. That March day in 2018, Cameron Bancroft was caught on camera rubbing sandpaper on the ball. Steve Smith, then captain, later explained the scheme had been devised by the team's leadership group. Smith, vice-captain David Warner, and Bancroft all received bans. The four bowlers who played that match—Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, and Nathan Lyon—were never sanctioned. They said they knew nothing until they saw the images on the big screen.

Khawaja played in all four Tests during that 2018 series before retiring from international cricket in January. His presence in the squad at the time, and his silence since, has left a particular kind of question hanging. When Cameron Bancroft was asked in a 2021 Guardian interview whether the bowlers knew about the tampering, he replied: "It's pretty probably self-explanatory." That answer, brief and suggestive, prompted the four bowlers to release a joint statement days later. They did not know a foreign substance was taken onto the field, they wrote. They saw it only when the images surfaced on television. The umpires inspected the ball afterward and found no damage. They asked for an end to the rumour-mongering.

Cummins, now 33 and captain, framed the autobiography as no threat. "Tell your story," he said. "It's fine." He acknowledged the scandal happened a long time ago and that investigations had been thorough. When pressed by ABC radio, he said the team moves on from things quickly and the episode hasn't taken up much of their time. Mitchell Starc, the left-arm seamer, had posed a similar question earlier in the week: "What's left to come out after eight years?"

Yet the timing is pointed. Khawaja's book arrives in November, just as Australia enters a year of high-profile away series—first South Africa, then India, then the Ashes in England. The South African pitch in Durban is expected to turn, and the home team has selected two spinners, Keshav Maharaj and Simon Harmer, to exploit it. Australia will be without all-rounder Cameron Green due to injury and must choose between Cooper Connolly and Nic Maddinson for the middle order. Cummins will captain a team that has, by his own account, put the scandal behind it. Whether Khawaja's words will disturb that settlement remains to be seen.