Pat Cummins faces marathon grilling as sandpapergate claims rock Australian cricket again

Australian cricket captain Pat Cummins spent more than an hour fielding questions from reporters on Thursday as he sought to shut down renewed claims about one of sport's most notorious cheating scandals. Inside the nets at Cricket Central in Sydney, he faced more than a dozen television cameras and a far larger pack of journalists, while outside a key Sheffield Shield match between New South Wales and South Australia was beginning, a contest Cummins made clear he would rather be the day's talking point.

"I don't want to talk about this again after today," he said. "Even if it takes all day.. I'll stay here until we have no more questions."

The fresh scrutiny stems from a memoir released last week by his friend and former teammate Usman Khawaja. In it, Khawaja alleges that the entire Australian team knew about the 2018 plot to alter the ball with sandpaper during the third Test against South Africa in Cape Town. Three players admitted involvement at the time and received lengthy bans, but the new claims have cast suspicion over other figures from that match, including Cummins, the star bowler who has since risen to what many joke is Australia's most important job.

Fans at the Sheffield Shield match expressed weariness and frustration that the affair has resurfaced almost eight years on, at the start of a highly anticipated summer of cricket. Josh, 28, told the BBC he thought everyone had moved on, calling it "a bit ridiculous, after eight years," while another spectator said simply: "I'm a bit bored of it." There is also concern about the impact on the men's team after a lacklustre tour of South Africa last month, its first Test series there since the 2018 incident.

For some, there is a sense of injustice that Australia alone remains haunted by ball tampering, which many players from that era say was common across the game. "It's a bit of a stitch up," said James, 21. "Every country has done it.. if it wasn't us, it was probably going to be someone else."

Khawaja's book has also stirred anger among current and former players and coaches. He wrote that after batsman Cameron Bancroft was caught with the sandpaper, he urged collective accountability: "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." Khawaja, who retired from international cricket in January, has since said he does not want to start a "witch hunt" and has declined to say exactly who he claims knew of the scheme.

David Warner, who received the harshest punishment of the Cape Town trio, said Khawaja had written the truth and accused Cummins of throwing him "under the bus" with his denial. Steve Smith, the captain at the time who was also suspended, is overseas and has yet to comment, while Bancroft remains silent despite previously suggesting the bowlers knew. Numerous former players and coaches have weighed in, and Cricket Australia faces pressure from some quarters to reopen its investigation, a step chief executive Todd Greenberg has already ruled out.

Professor David Rowe of the University of Western Sydney told the BBC the saga still cuts deep because Australians see themselves as "a nation of good sports," where winning must come with honour and fairness. He called the original revelation a "nasty shock" that inflicted "collective shame," and warned that dismissing the matter now would only fuel conspiracy theories. "One of the best ways to fuel conspiracy theories and keep sandpapergate going is to essentially say 'there's no more to see here', especially when that comes from the authorities," he said.

Throughout the press conference, which one reporter suggested might be the longest in Australian sporting history, Cummins paused carefully before answering but was blunt in rejecting what he called Khawaja's "vague" claims, admitting he was frustrated a friend had put him in this position. "Friends aren't casual with each other's lives and reputations.. That's something I've been grappling with the last couple of days," he said. As the questions finally slowed, he called it "annoying" that the scandal remained a distraction, gesturing toward the Sheffield Shield match and noting Friday's one-day international against England in Perth, for which he and other key players are being rested.

"It's been eight years.. Hopefully today we put a line through it and we're done and we can all move on to much more fun topics, like actual cricket," Cummins said. Few expect that wish to be granted. "It's going to be hard to move on, given that there's two sides of the story and it doesn't look like either side is going to back down," said James. "I don't know what the outcome will be."