AUS vs SA: ‘I Was Not Interviewed’ - Usman Khawaja As Ball-tampering Scandal Hangs Over South Africa Tests

More concerns have been voiced regarding the situation as Australia gets ready to play South Africa in Test cricket for the first time since the ball-tampering disaster in 2018.

Usman Khawaja, a seasoned opener, said on Thursday that he was not contacted during the hurriedly carried out probe into the Australian players’ usage of sandpaper to change the state of the ball during the Test at Newlands.

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Usman Khawaja Denies Participation In Interviews

Before practising for the first Test against South Africa at the Gabba, which starts on Saturday, Usman Khawaja stated, “I was not interviewed.” Khawaja said that he was startled at the time when asked if he was.

Another member of the 2018 touring team, Mitchell Marsh, was reportedly not interviewed, according to many individuals close to the team who asked to remain anonymous because they had been instructed not to disclose the private probe. For a response, Marsh has been contacted.

There have been lingering worries that Cricket Australia’s probe was far from thorough. Following the inquiry, three players received punishment: Steve Smith, David Warner, and Cameron Bancroft received one-year cricket bans each, as well as a nine-month ban. Smith was prohibited from holding leadership roles for an additional year and Warner was prohibited for the rest of their lives.

There Were Far More People Involved: James Erskine

James Erskine, manager of Warner, has constantly claimed that there were more players engaged in the incident than were included in the report.

“Everybody has been fiddling around with balls and the penalty at the time by the ICC [International Cricket Council] was a one-match ban,” Erskine said last week after Warner withdrew his application with CA for a review of his lifetime leadership ban.

“You’d have to be a blind, black Labrador [to not see] there were far more than three people involved in this thing. They all got a caning and David Warner was completely villainised.”

CA has refused to release the report of the investigation. “It wouldn’t be appropriate to be made public because the information was provided in confidence,” a CA spokesman told the Herald and The Age on Thursday.

The code of conduct’s Article 10 was recently revised to permit an independent panel to hold public hearings when reviewing code-of-conduct convictions and sanctions, ushering in what seemed to be a new age of openness for the governing body.

When Warner withdrew from the process, the scheduled Wednesday hearing to consider his request to have his leadership suspension reduced was cancelled.

Warner was not pleased that he could have to address the 2018 Cape Town controversy again or that the media might have been permitted to cover the entire hearing even if his request was merely for the duration of the suspension. He has never attempted to downplay his responsibility for the tragedy.

Despite changing the code of conduct to promote more openness, CA disagreed with the independent code-of-conduct commissioner Alan Sullivan’s choice to make the Warner hearing at least partially public.

Warner withdrew his application because he did not want to subject his family or his teammates to any more “suffering” and said the three-person code-of-conduct commission panel was aiming to perform a “public lynching.”

We Definitely Play Our Cricket Differently: Usman Khawaja

Usman Khawaja thinks the offensive conduct on both sides that ruined the 2018 tour has been eliminated.

“Obviously being part of that tour, I personally know we’re a very different Australian cricket team from what we were back then,” he said. “The way we go about it, the way we play.

“A lot of the guys over there have matured a lot, too, both as cricketers and humans. They’re a bit older, have a couple more kids, a lot of things have changed. We definitely play our cricket differently. I expect this series to be played in a lot better spirit, I kind of know it will be.”

According to Usman Khawaja, it was up to South Africa to make sure that their behaviour was equally up to par.

“We can only control what the Australian cricket team does,” he said. “I feel like the way we’ve played cricket over the last few years has been a representation of showcasing our skills and how well we’re playing, but also the way we’re playing.”

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