Scott Boland has brushed aside Usman Khawaja’s allegations about ball tampering, saying he had seen nothing untoward in his time as a Test and Victorian paceman.
Recent Test opener Nic Maddinson also dismissed Khawaja’s comments, saying they were disappointing and the retired star had a book to promote.
Khawaja’s autobiography is about to be released and excerpts were published over the weekend, dramatically ripping off the bandaid by revisiting Sandpapergate from eight years ago.
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The former Test batsman said everyone in the Australian team knew about the ball tampering before the match against South Africa at Newlands. Cam Bancroft was caught doctoring the ball with sandpaper and it led to bans for him, Steve Smith and David Warner.
There have been denials — including from current captain Pat Cummins — that knowledge of the tampering was widespread through the Australian team.
Khawaja has gone further, saying Victoria were masters of ball tampering a few years ago, when Boland was starting his first-class career. Boland made his Test debut three years after the dramas in Cape Town.
“I don’t know what the ‘dark arts’ are. You probably have to ask Usman for that,” Boland said on Monday in Melbourne.
“But in general, the last (eight) years since Cape Town, reverse swing has really gone out of the game.
“I don’t know – if you went back to club cricket, without cameras, you would probably see a lot of things happen.
“From my point of view, I haven’t really seen anything untoward.”
Maddinson, who made an unsuccessful return to the Test team on last month’s South African tour, said it was disappointing that Sandpapergate had been revisited.
“But … it’s that time of year, isn’t it, where Christmas comes along and people have books to sell, so things come out,” he said.
“The three guys who have been affected the most (Smith, Bancroft and Warner), it doesn’t really help them at all to relive it, especially over the past month.
“To just pop up again at the start of a summer, going into a pretty big six months for the team, is obviously probably disappointing for those guys.”
