The Sandpapergate controversy has resurfaced in Australian cricket, eight years after the 2018 scandal. Following fresh revelations by former Australia batter Usman Khawaja in his memoir, ‘Sabr’, ex-leg-spinner Stuart MacGill has now admitted to using sandpaper on the ball during his playing career.MacGill, who played 44 Tests and three ODIs for Australia between 1998 and 2008, said he had used sandpaper on the ball but insisted that it was not part of a bigger plan to cheat.His admission has added another twist to the Sandpapergate controversy, which took place during Australia’s Test against South Africa in Cape Town in 2018. The incident had led to bans for three Australian players and remains one of the biggest controversies in Australian cricket.
MacGill reveals how he used sandpaper
Speaking to former Sydney Sixers teammates Steve O’Keefe and Moises Henriques on a FanaticsTV YouTube show, MacGill explained how he would attach a small piece of sandpaper to his thumb and use it to scratch the ball.“I’d cut a small piece of sandpaper and tape it to my thumb,” he said. “It was not a part of a massive ‘global cheating scam’; I was just really curious to see what would happen and if it would work. And oh, it works (laughs),” said MacGill.He also explained how he would use the sandpaper after tea, remove it from his thumb and throw it away before the match continued.“What they would do is the umpires as you’re walking out on the ground, they used to put the ball sort of about 20 metres over the boundary and leave it there and you’d run out on the field, pick it up and go on the field. I would tape a little bit of a square of sandpaper on my thumb, pick the ball up just after tea, scratch the living daylights out of it, pull the sandpaper off, chuck it in the gutter before a ball had even been bowled. So nobody even knew that I’d done it, apart from all the scratches on the ball,” he added.
Khawaja’s claims reopen Sandpapergate
MacGill’s admission comes after Khawaja made fresh claims about the 2018 ball-tampering scandal in his memoir, ‘Sabr’.Cricket Australia has maintained that the wider Australian team was not aware of the plan to use sandpaper to change the condition of the ball during the Cape Town Test against South Africa.However, Khawaja’s revelations have raised fresh questions about what other players knew about the incident.Darren Lehmann, who was Australia’s head coach during the 2018 tour of South Africa, has strongly denied knowing about the plan to use sandpaper. Players such as Mitchell Starc have also publicly denied any involvement in the scandal.Former Australia captain David Warner, one of the three players punished over the incident, has backed Khawaja and said that the claims in his autobiography are true.