Australia will look to bury the demons of the Sandpapergate controversy that unfolded during their last tour of South Africa in 2018 as the two teams face off in the first Test of their much-hyped series in Durban. Smith was banned from international and domestic cricket for 12 months and stripped of the captaincy, while also receiving a leadership ban. Steve Smith remains the only survivor among the trio involved in the scandal, with David Warner now retired and Cameron Bancroft no longer in Australia’s plans.
He didn’t go into too much detail, just basically gave me the heads-up that he is doing a book and, as always, no worries,” Cummins said during a pre-match press conference. Speaking ahead of the series opener, Australia captain Pat Cummins addressed the chatter surrounding former teammate Usman Khawaja ‘s upcoming autobiography and the prospect of the Sandpapergate controversy being raised in it. “Uz gave me a buzz a few weeks back that he is releasing a book.
“Tell your story. It’s fine. It’s obviously a long time ago and all the investigations, everything was done back then and we answered every question a million times. It was dealt with then and all I can say is that as a group, we have moved on and we are very happy with the last eight to nine years how we have been as a group and evolved and obviously my focus is on captaining the cricket team,” he added.
