Usman Khawaja personally informed Test captain Pat Cummins and Cricket Australia chief executive Todd Greenberg that his forthcoming memoir contains a dedicated chapter on the 2018 Sandpapergate scandal, doing so before the Australian squad departed for South Africa.
Khawaja sat down with Cummins in Brisbane over coffee to walk him through what the book would reveal, a deliberate step to ensure neither the captain nor the board was caught off guard once the tour was under way.
Greenberg subsequently confirmed to the Sydney Morning Herald that both he and Cummins received that heads-up from Khawaja ahead of the South Africa series. Greenberg also made clear that the book would not reach readers while the tour is still in progress. The memoir, titled Sabr: Finding My Way in Cricket and Life, is scheduled for release on November 10 2026, published by Penguin Books Australia across 448 pages in hardback, ebook and audiobook formats.
Why does the sandpaper chapter carry particular weight on this tour?
Khawaja was a member of the Australian squad that toured South Africa in 2018 when the ball-tampering scandal broke during the Cape Town Test. Cricket Australia’s investigation at the time identified David Warner as the ringleader of the sandpaper plot, with Cameron Bancroft the player caught on camera applying the sandpaper to the ball. Khawaja has long been a close friend of Warner, and that personal connection gives his written account of those events a significance that extends well beyond a standard memoir chapter.
The timing of the current tour has also brought the original incident back into public circulation through other channels. SuperSport posted a three-minute, 49-second clip to social media platform X showing Bancroft applying sandpaper to the ball during the 2018 match. That footage circulated publicly in the days leading up to the first Test between Australia and South Africa, which is scheduled to begin in Durban on October 9 2026. The combination of the viral footage and the imminent memoir has placed Sandpapergate firmly back at the centre of Australian cricket’s public conversation.
What does Greenberg’s clarification establish about the book’s release?
Greenberg’s public statement draws a clear line between the ongoing tour and the publication of Khawaja’s account. The November 10 2026 release date means that the dedicated Sandpapergate chapter, along with whatever else the memoir contains on those events, will not be available to the public until after the South Africa series has concluded. No administrative or disciplinary process connected to the book’s contents has been confirmed at this stage.
The specific details of what Khawaja has written about the 2018 scandal remain undisclosed ahead of publication. Only the existence of the chapter has been confirmed through available sources. Khawaja’s decision to brief both the captain and the chief executive before departure signals that he anticipated the chapter would generate significant attention, and that he chose transparency with Cricket Australia’s leadership over allowing the revelations to surface without warning during a live international series.
