England’s Harry Brook (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)
England captain Harry Brook has chosen to stay out of the fresh controversy surrounding Australia’s 2018 ball-tampering scandal, stating that he has never witnessed any form of ball tampering during his international career. I think I was about 17 or 18 years old, so I was completely oblivious to any of that stuff,” Brook said during the pre-match press conference, as quoted by The Independent. With Usman Khawaja ‘s autobiography bringing the infamous Sandpapergate episode back into the spotlight, Brook made it clear that he had no direct knowledge of what happened in the Australian dressing room. “I’ve never seen any ball tampering before. I wasn’t in that (Australia) dressing room.
“We’re here in Australia, we’re looking forward to this series, and all we can do is concentrate on ourselves and getting ourselves as ready as possible. We’re just trying to concentrate on ourselves at the minute. That’s all we can do. We’re here to play against a strong Australian side in their backyard,” he added.
The former Australia opener claimed that the entire team knew about the use of sandpaper during the third Test against South Africa in Cape Town in 2018. The controversy returned to the headlines following the publication of excerpts from Khawaja’s recently released autobiography.
The England captain described the Australia-England rivalry as a special one and said his team was eager to get the series underway at Optus Stadium. The atmosphere when we played here was unbelievable,” he said. He stressed that his team needed to concentrate on its preparations for a demanding series against Australia on their home turf. “Australia against England is always a good series, and we’re looking forward to kickstarting it. We’re very happy to be out here. We’re all really raring to go here at Optus Stadium, which is where the last Ashes started. It’s an amazing place to play cricket.