Darren Lehmann has downplayed Usman Khawaja's bombshell that the entire team, including the staff, knew about the sandpaper scandal during the 2018 Test
series against South Africa. Cameron Bancroft was caught ball tampering during the third Test in Cape Town. Australia captain Steve Smith later admitted that the leadership group, involving him and David Warner, was aware of the act, leading to a nine-month ban for Bancroft and 12-month bans for Warner and Smith. Darren Lehmann was the Australian coach back then and resigned following the controversy. Khawaja, in a recent interview to Nine, said that Warner, Smith and Bancroft were not the only players involved in the ball-tampering, adding that 'all of us' were aware of it. “It was all of us. Not the batters, not the bowlers, not the staff. All of us. In an ideal world, I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be the one who comes out and talks about the truth. The issue is that I genuinely thought after eight years the truth would have been out by now,” Usman Khawaja said. Lehmann, however, said that he doesn't believe that everyone was aware of the ball tampering; he added that he could only speak for himself. Khawaja had said that he told the team to take collective responsibility for the act. “I don’t think everyone would have known,” Lehmann told ABC. “But you do know ball-tampering is going on because it’s been happening for 150 years. So it’s just how it’s being done and how you would know to that extent, I suppose, and how the bowlers would know, how other players would know. “So that’s an individual case-by-case… on the players, and I suppose they’ll respond with their thoughts and what they know. I can’t speak for them at all. I can only know what I know, and I know that ball-tampering was a big part of the game of cricket. Now it’s obsolete. But that doesn’t make it right either, but that’s the case, and we paid a heavy price for that.” Lehmann, meanwhile, questioned the timing of Khawaja’s bombshell, saying that he might have made the revelation on purpose to increase the sales of his book, 'Sabr: Finding My Way in Cricket and Life', which is set to release on November 10. “That’s part and parcel of selling books, I suppose. I don’t know what he’s getting paid. He’s probably getting paid a lot of money to do it. Is it worth it? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll write a book. Things are left unsaid sometimes for the good of the game and the good of the people. But it is what it is. You’ve just got to deal with it, don’t you? Each time it comes up. It’ll happen somewhere else, I’m sure.”
