Cricket Australia stands by ball-tampering review, CEO says

Cricket Australia has firmly ruled out reopening its investigation into the 2018 ball-tampering scandal, saying there is no compelling reason to revisit a case now challenged by fresh public allegations from within the sport.

Todd Greenberg, the governing body’s chief executive, told Sports Entertainment Network that the organisation remains comfortable with the outcome of the original inquiry. “We don’t see any compelling reason to open the investigation or revisit this again. I don’t think there’s anything that can be gained from that,” he said. His position is that the ruling body has based its assessment on the information it received, including material from former opener Usman Khawaja, and that this stance has not changed.

Greenberg’s intervention came before former Australia captain Michael Clarke publicly called for the process to be restaged. Clarke, speaking to 2DayFM, argued that public confidence has not recovered and that accountability requires the truth to be formally established. “They can’t trust what’s real. They don’t know the truth until this gets reopened and the truth comes out,” he said. “We had the chance in 2018. The truth didn’t come out. We had the chance in 2021 when [Bancroft] made those comments. The truth didn’t come out. Now we’ve got this opportunity.”

The dispute centres on claims made by Khawaja, who alleged in his autobiography that the entire Australia team knew sandpaper was used to alter the condition of the ball during the third Test against South Africa in Cape Town in 2018. The original Cricket Australia investigation found that the national side’s bowling attack was unaware of the tampering. It led to year-long bans for captain Steve Smith, vice-captain David Warner and batter Cameron Bancroft.

Greenberg, who acknowledged he had not yet read Khawaja’s book but hoped to, urged careful handling of the allegations. He noted that the book contains details contradicting versions of events given by others, and stressed that players were urged to come forward at the time and have had the opportunity to do so over the past eight years. “It’s important to attribute his words and not the headlines,” he said, adding that he has “huge respect” for Khawaja giving his version of events. He also cautioned that a single agreed account may never be possible, given such conflicting views from the same moment in time.

By contrast, Clarke directed pointed questions at the current leadership of the Test side, saying Pat Cummins, who was part of the bowling line-up in Cape Town, should speak to Khawaja’s claims. “I can’t believe we haven’t heard from Pat Cummins yet, the Australian captain,” he said. He argued the captaincy history itself hinges on the episode: Smith lost the job through his ban, Tim Paine succeeded him, and Cummins took over in November 2021, a succession Clarke says would not have occurred without “sandpapergate”.

Bancroft’s earlier comments remain part of the accountability record. In a 2021 interview with the Guardian he was asked whether the bowlers knew and replied: “It’s pretty probably self-explanatory.” Shortly afterwards, the Cape Town bowling attack issued a joint statement saying they “did not know a foreign substance was taken on to the field”.

That position has been restated by Mitchell Starc, one of the four bowlers from that Test who remain in the Australia red-ball side alongside Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon. Speaking at a season launch event in Sydney, Starc said he was disappointed by the allegation and that his recollection had not changed since 2021. “We weren’t aware it [sandpaper] was taken on the field to be tampered with. We saw it on the big screen in Cape Town,” he said, adding that he had not read the book and considered the Port Elizabeth claim the first he had heard of any such activity there.

Meanwhile, Warner, who served the same year-long ban, has backed Khawaja’s account, calling his recollections “100% accurate” on Monday. Clarke said the Port Elizabeth allegation also needed investigation, and that for now, “there’s more questions than answers.”