"I’ll stay here until you have no more questions. I don’t want to talk about this again after today." Pat Cummins, the Australian captain, turned up certain, on Friday, wanting to put an end to the ball-tampering saga from the 2018 Cape Town Test, after a fresh set of allegations resurfaced following Usman Khawaja’s recent claims. Khawaja spoke to the Sydney Morning Herald ahead of the launch of his autobiography Sabr and claimed that everyone in the team was aware of the use of sandpaper on the ball.
So, Cummins stayed put for 69 minutes answering a long list of questions at the press conference. The allegations that David Warner had called ‘100 percent accurate’ were dismissed by Cummins as ‘100 per cent wrong’, and he rejected Khawaja’s claims as ‘complete and utter nonsense’
"When he says ‘We all knew’, if by that he means that we knew sandpaper was going out in the field, he’s 100 per cent wrong," Cummins said. "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.”
Cummins was, moreover, critical of the way Usman presented his side of the story. "I was genuinely shocked this week when I found out that Usman admitted that he told Cam [Cameron Bancroft] to be careful when using sandpaper (in Cape Town). That’s not the Usman that I know. It’s not the Usman that has been part of a team that’s helped rebuild the Australian cricket culture over the last eight years. The Usman that would have stopped that from happening there and then.
"Usman’s a friend, but friends aren’t casual with each other’s lives and reputations. In his book, Uzzy has been casual with my life, and the lives of many others, and I think Australian cricket...This really affects Australian cricket. The way that he’s presented his story. I think he’s done that in a very casual manner, and it affects a lot of people. That’s what I’m grappling with at the moment because I don’t think it’s okay.
"… Usman is a friend, but I think the way he’s kind of been quite casual and flippant with people’s lives in Australian cricket, I don’t think that’s okay, and I don’t think that’s what friends do."
Cummins, however, did admit that the culture in that team did carry a ‘win-at-all;cost’ mentality, with an ugly underbelly. “There was too many silos within the team – traits that I hope that everyone has seen and I try very hard to eradicate for the last six years as captain.”
"My memories of coming back into that side was there were parts that I didn’t really think was okay," Cummins said. "I thought the way we acted on the field was quite abrasive. [I] didn’t like some of the way we spoke to umpires, the opposition. I think there was a bit of an arrogance and a bit of an ugliness at times that just didn’t really sit well with me as a young guy.
"And now that I’m captain, I’ve spent a lot of time making sure that that’s not the case with this current Aussie team, and I think we’ve been absolutely brilliant since 2018."
Cummins admitted that when he returned to international cricket after a lengthy injury break, he was aware of various techniques being employed by various teams to tamper with the condition of the ball to extract reverse swing - from using superglue to nail polish to certain brands of mints, lifting the seam and sandpaper.
"There’ve been previous times which I thought was normal (deterioration), which I’m starting to think it’s less normal now because I haven’t seen it a long time, where maybe the quarter seems a little bit higher than it should be," he said.
"Maybe someone’s just tried to lift it up a tiny bit with a finger. I’ve not seen that since then. But at the time coming back into the team after not much cricket, I thought that was very normal."
He even went on to narrate an incident from the Sheffield Shield when he witnessed someone tamper with the ball. All of that, however, he claims happened before the 2018 tour of South Africa
"It was a batter, it was a senior player – I won’t mention him – but he took a bottle cap out on the field. That was the one time I’ve seen it on the field,” Cummins said. “I was looking, going, ‘Wow, that’s not okay.’ It was dealt with, the umpires knew it as well. They called him out and said, ‘You got to stop that right now’. That’s the only time I’ve seen something illegal out there."
In saying so, he also admitted that the bans handed out to Steve Smith, Warner and Cameron Bancroft was ‘over-the-top’. “There was a lot of lawlessness about what was going on in that series...it was just a crazy series and I’m very glad we haven’t seen a series like that since. And it [ball tampering] was also quite prevalent. We have heard stories of other teams doing it. I think the whole scale got a little bit lost (in the punishments given to those three players). It’s my personal opinion but I think their bans were way over the top.”
