Usman Khawaja and Pat Cummins (Image credit: Agencies)
Cummins spoke about his 15-year association with Khawaja and said the former Australia opener had been a good friend to him throughout his career. I won’t be doing that.
NEW DELHI: Australia captain Pat Cummins has hit back at former teammate Usman Khawaja over his claims about the 2018 ball-tampering scandal, calling them “100% wrong” and “utter nonsense”. “You’ve got to move on,” he said. “I’ve played 15 years, my debut for New South Wales and with Australia, Usman was right there, and he’s been awesome to me, and he’s a friend,” Cummins said. So yeah, they’re all things I’m grappling with at the moment,” he said. I got asked all the questions, and answered them all fairly,” he said.
Cummins faced several questions about Khawaja’s autobiography during a fiery press conference in Sydney. He was asked whether he would take legal action against his former teammate, whether he had spoken to Khawaja and if Cricket Australia should reopen the investigation into the sandpaper scandal. The Australia captain addressed all these issues and also explained why he felt Khawaja’s claims were irresponsible. “It’s been eight years … You got to draw the line at some point. “But this is people’s real lives, and this is serious. Like this affects not only people but people’s families, and I’m one of the lesser ones. Maybe this week I’m right there. But talking eight years ago, like it was traumatic for those guys, for all of us, for Australian cricket, for fans. So to bring it up so flippantly and casually, I think it’s irresponsible. But there’s a very proper way to do things and an improper [way], and I think that investigation was the proper way to do it. Everyone was asked in the circumstances, with a game very quickly after, so yeah, that’s for CA. I think you could maybe argue whether the judgments were fair, but what can you do?
I saw [my wife] Becky on the news yesterday. “Part of why I think this is still lingering after eight years is there’s a lot of context around this, which is hard to explain and hard to articulate, and that’s what I want to do today.