Pat Cummins press conference live updates: Australian cricket captain to speak about Usman Khawaja’s ‘Sandpapergate’ claims

Cummins to speak about allegations in Khawaja’s book about the 2018 ball-tampering incidentGideon Haigh, writing for the Guardian this week, says the greatest shame of the controversy inflamed by Usman Khawaja’s memoir Sabr is that “99% of those opining about it will never read it”.They will experience it by quotes and summaries, magnified and distorted, elided and exaggerated, shaped by voyeurism and schadenfreude.In fact, Sabr is a readable, surprisingly revealing, sometimes painfully frank book about a unique career.If he developed a carapace to deal with such endless disappointment, should that surprise anyone?Sabr might mean patience or resilience in Urdu, but a strength of Khawaja’s testament is that he allows the impatience to show through.As far as our statement said, we weren’t aware of things being taken on the field, that’s where I’ll leave it. We weren’t aware anything was taken on to the field to be tampered with. We saw [the sandpaper] on the big screen in Cape Town.As far as the book is concerned, I haven’t read it. I probably won’t read it. So that’s for Usman to elaborate on. Continue reading...