The ghosts of Cape Town are rattling Australian cricket once again. In his newly released autobiography, Sabr, former batter Usman Khawaja threw an incendiary grenade into the dressing room, claiming the entire Australian Test squad knew about the scheme to scuff the ball with sandpaper during the ill-fated 2018 South Africa series. Khawaja also insisted the illicit tampering began during the second Test in Port Elizabeth—long before television cameras caught Cameron Bancroft red-handed at Newlands in the third.
Mitchell Starc fired right back. The left-arm spearhead rejected Khawaja's claims wholesale, refusing to budge from the joint defense he mounted in 2021 alongside Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, and Nathan Lyon. The pace quartet had stated unequivocally that they had no clue Bancroft smuggled yellow sandpaper onto the turf. Starc made it clear his story has not changed by a single syllable.
His wife, former Australia women's captain Alyssa Healy, found herself trapped directly in the crossfire. Speaking at a broadcast launch for Kayo Sports and Fox Cricket, Healy did not conceal the discomfort of watching old wounds torn open at the family dinner table. "It’s a hard one to comment on," Healy said. "At the moment, I feel slightly conflicted, and I’m in the middle of it. It’s hard to make a comment on it, we’ll see where it goes and if CA do take it forward or how it rolls throughout the media, and I’ll make a comment from there. For now, I’m just gonna sit and wait and watch it unfold."
Cricket Australia paid a staggering price in March 2018. Bancroft copped a nine-month suspension. Captain Steve Smith and vice-captain David Warner took 12-month bans that stripped Smith of the captaincy and permanently locked Warner out of official leadership roles. It was a scorched-earth reckoning.
Yet the governing body has zero appetite for an encore trial. Cricket Australia chief executive Todd Greenberg made it known that the board will not reopen the investigation eight years after the fact. The matter, as far as headquarters is concerned, is dead and buried.
Alyssa Healy backed that verdict, arguing that dragging players back into the dock serves nobody. "I watched it eight years ago too," she said, endorsing Greenberg's decision to look past the controversy. "I think the game of cricket as a whole has moved on. Todd Greenberg’s statement today about not looking into it any further is a great sign of where we’re headed and that’s moving forward and looking ahead to this summer."
Healy closed with a plea for the emotional strain inflicted on the names dragged back into public view. "I feel for everyone involved," she added. "I think from a human side of things we’ve got to remember that and put our arms around the people that are being mentioned." For Starc and his bowling partners, however, silence remains impossible as long as old teammates keep writing new chapters.