Australia’s three-Test tour of South Africa is slated to get underway on October 9 in Durban, marking their first red-ball visit to the Rainbow Nation since the infamous 2018 Sandpaper Gate scandal.
Steve Smith and David Warner had received 12-month bans from Cricket Australia, while Cameron Bancroft was suspended for nine months after being caught using sandpaper on the ball during the Cape Town Test.
Ahead of the series, former Australia batter Usman Khawaja has drawn attention with his upcoming autobiography, titled Sabr, which is expected to revisit the ball-tampering episode and details surrounding the team.
Addressing the media on the eve of the first Test, Australia's Test captain Pat Cummins responded to the upcoming book release, stating that players are free to tell their own stories and that the team is focused on the current series.
"Yeah, Uz gave me a buzz a few weeks back that he's releasing a book," Cummins told reporters.
“He didn't go back into too much detail. He just basically gave me a heads-up that he's doing a book. As always, my response was, 'No worries, you can tell your story. That's fine',” he added.
When pressed further by journalists during the pre-match press conference, Cummins dismissed any concerns. He emphasized that the group has completely evolved over the eight or nine years since the infamous Cape Town Test, and his sole focus remains on leading the current national team.
“I'm not too sure. You'll need to ask him. It was obviously a long time ago. All the investigations and everything was done back then. I answered every question a million times. It was dealt with then," Cummins stated.
“All I can say is as a group, we've moved on. Very happy with the last eight or nine years, how we've been as a group and evolved, and obviously my focus is on captaining the cricket team,” he remarked.
After the row in 2018, all the Australian bowlers involved - Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc and Nathan Lyon issued a joint statement, denying any prior knowledge of Bancroft's ball-tampering plans.
In 2021, the four frontline bowlers explicitly requested "an end to the rumour-mongering and innuendo" after Bancroft implied that the bowling unit was aware of cheating.
