Cummins rejects Khawaja's sandpaper allegations as complete and utter nonsense

Pat Cummins has spent more than an hour rejecting Usman Khawaja's claim that Australia's 2018 side planned to tamper with the ball, calling the allegation complete and utter nonsense

Pat Cummins has denied any part in the sandpaper plot of 2018, telling reporters in Sydney on Friday that Usman Khawaja's account of the 2018 tour of South Africa is wrong on its central point.

"When he says we all knew, if by that he means that we knew sandpaper was going out on 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."

The Australia captain was blunter still about the heavier charge. "He says that I and others were architects of a scheme to ball tamper with sandpaper," he said. "That's complete and utter nonsense."

No master plan, no team meeting

Cummins said the suggestion of an organised scheme was the part he could not let stand, insisting there was no master-plan around using illegal methods.

"There's no grand plan. There's no team meeting. There's no bowlers saying this is what must happen," he said.

Khawaja's memoir, Sabr, says the whole XI knew what was happening at Cape Town, and that he urged the squad to take collective responsibility rather than leave Cameron Bancroft, Steve Smith and David Warner to carry the punishment alone. Cummins said he had no memory of any such proposal being put to the players.

A Port Elizabeth claim that was news to him

The book also alleges that sandpaper was used on the ball at Port Elizabeth, the Test before Cape Town. Cummins said that passage was the first he had heard of it.

"That was news to me this week," he said. "I had no idea. Even chatting with a couple of guys, that was a revelation to us."

He said the only illegal act he had witnessed on a field was a senior batter carrying a bottle cap out during a Sheffield Shield match early in his career, which the umpires stopped at once.

Defamation advice, but no legal action

Cummins said he had been advised during the week that parts of the account were "probably defamatory", and ruled out suing a team-mate he still counts as a friend.

"But I won't be doing that," he said. "Like, you've got to move on. It's been eight years. You've got to draw a line at some point."

He was less forgiving about the manner of the telling. "Usman's a friend, but friends aren't casual with each other's lives and reputations," he said, adding that the book had been careless with his own life and with those of many others in Australian cricket.

He also said he backed Khawaja's right to publish. "I'm really glad that he feels like he can," Cummins said. "But we have to be accountable for the things that we say and do."

An ugly underbelly in the 2018 side

The captain was not uniformly protective of the team he came back into that year, describing a win-at-all-costs mentality, an "ugly underbelly" and too many silos in the dressing room.

"My memories of coming back into that side was there was parts that I didn't really think was okay," he said. "I thought the way we acted on the field was quite abrasive."

He repeated his long-held view that the bans given to Smith, Warner and Bancroft were far heavier than the offence warranted.

Cricket Australia will not reopen the case

Chief executive Todd Greenberg said earlier in the week that Cricket Australia would not revisit its 2018 investigation, and Cummins said that decision belonged to the governing body rather than to him.

Cummins said Greenberg had told him the accounts had not moved: "I've read all the investigations. Guys have been very, very consistent this whole time."

He said he had spoken to Khawaja and to Smith during the week, but not to Warner, who has publicly supported Khawaja's version of events, nor to Bancroft.

Cummins opened the session by promising to stay until the questions ran out, and shut the door on the subject as he did so: "I don't want to talk about this again after today."