“It was all of us. Not the batters, not the bowlers, not the staff. All of us,” Khawaja told the Sydney Morning Herald. He has also detailed his account of the controversy in his upcoming autobiography, Sabr, which is due to be released soon.
The Cape Town incident unfolded during Australia's Test against South Africa when opener Cameron Bancroft was caught hiding a small piece of sandpaper down his trousers. Following the incident, then-captain Steve Smith publicly admitted that the team's leadership group had planned to tamper with the ball.
Smith and vice-captain David Warner were subsequently handed 12-month bans, while Bancroft received a nine-month suspension. Smith was also prohibited from holding any leadership position in Australian cricket for a further period of 12 months. Warner was handed a lifetime captaincy ban, which was later removed in 2024. He was subsequently named captain of Sydney Thunder.
Khawaja said he had urged his teammates inside the dressing room to accept collective responsibility rather than allowing Smith, Warner and Bancroft to shoulder the consequences alone. He maintained that the entire team knew what was happening and should have faced the issue together.
“In an ideal world, I don’t want to do this,” Khawaja was quoted as saying by the Sydney Morning Herald. “I don’t want to be the one who comes out and talks about the truth. The issue is that I genuinely thought after eight years the truth would have been out by now.
“Maybe I thought Davey would have exposed it, or someone else would have talked about it more. I just didn’t think it was going to come down to this. But the longer it’s gone on for, and right from the very start, I’ve been on the train of collectively taking it.
“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.”
Khawaja explained that he had decided to speak publicly because he believed it was the right thing to do. He also expressed support for Smith, Warner and Bancroft, saying the three players had continued to face the consequences of the controversy years after it took place.
“I’ve always felt like there’s more to life than just cricket, and these guys, in some respect, deserve that justice,” Khawaja said. “And it just doesn’t feel like anyone’s going to give it to them. None of those three want to be the first to say anything. And rightly so, it will just be hearsay and ‘their word’ if they do. They needed someone else to say something.”
Khawaja also questioned the investigation conducted by Cricket Australia following the Cape Town Test. While the investigation resulted in sanctions against Smith, Warner and Bancroft, he said he was surprised that the board never interviewed him.
“I was sitting next to Cam Bancroft that whole Test match, and I didn’t get interviewed,” Khawaja said. “I thoroughly feel that I didn’t get interviewed because of that, because they knew that I wanted to take it as a team, because they knew I was ready to tell the truth if I was interviewed.
“And I was waiting for my phone to ring. It just never rang, and then the penalties were given, and I couldn’t believe it.”
The former Australian opener further revealed that he had spoken to current Test captain Pat Cummins before Australia's recent tour of South Africa, during which the team lost the Test series 2-1. Khawaja informed Cummins about his autobiography and his intention to address the ball-tampering controversy in the book.
Khawaja, who retired from international cricket at the start of the year following the Ashes, acknowledged that his revelations could make things difficult for some people in the short term. However, he remained firm that disclosing his account was necessary and could finally allow the team to move beyond the controversy.
“If you read my story, if you read what I’m saying, I have numerous times said it’s us, the team. This is the team. It’s not Steve, Davey and Bangers. It’s all of us,” Khawaja said.
“At the end of the day, I still think it’s the right thing to do for particularly those three guys. And I think most of the guys in the team, at some level, will be relieved that we can finally move on.”
Khawaja's revelations have brought renewed attention to the Cape Town ball-tampering scandal, particularly the question of how widely the use of sandpaper was known within the Australian dressing room. His account also challenges the earlier denials made by Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon, who issued a joint statement in 2021 rejecting allegations that they knew about the ball being tampered with.
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