David Warner has accused Cricket Australia of a "cover-up" as the fallout from Usman Khawaja's allegations about the 2018 sandpaper scandal continues. Warner was one of three players, along with Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft, who was banned over the ball-tampering controversy, and he is now a former vice-captain. Khawaja's newly released autobiography made a series of explosive claims suggesting the entire squad was party to the plot, and Warner swiftly backed them.

In a social media post, Warner said he was not aware that Cricket Australia had interviewed Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc or Nathan Lyon during its 2018 investigation. He argued that if that was correct, Cricket Australia could not push the idea that the bowlers did not know, and claimed the governing body had decided who to blame from the beginning and ran a shoddy investigation to serve that purpose. "That stinks of a cover-up," he wrote.S2

In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, Khawaja concluded: "It was all of us. Not the batters, not the bowlers, not the staff. All of us." However, Hazlewood, Starc and Lyon signed a statement in 2021, along with fellow bowler Pat Cummins, denying all knowledge of the affair. Cummins strongly rejected Khawaja's claims at a press conference this week, calling them "complete and utter nonsense" and saying that if Khawaja meant the players knew sandpaper was going onto the field, he was "100 per cent wrong".S2

Cricket Australia has indicated it has no intention of reopening its investigation. In a statement it said there had been considerable speculation in the eight years since the 2018 Cape Town Test, including extensive media coverage during last month's series in South Africa, but that the opportunity to present relevant information remained open. It said all information presented to date had been properly considered and that it remained comfortable with the findings of its integrity process.S2