Despite its sandpaper cheating bombshell, Usman Khawaja’s autobiography is strategic about its revelations

0 November 12, 2026 00:10

Sabr has been carefully designed to avoid pointing fingers, though the cracks under the surface are easy enough to detect.

Former test cricketer Usman Khawaja’s autobiography Sabr has hit the headlines because of its claim the whole Australian cricket team knew about the ball being illegally doctored with sandpaper during a 2018 test match in South Africa.

Only three players – captain Steve Smith, vice-captain Dave Warner and Cameron Bancroft – were singled out and suspended by a hastily conceived Cricket Australia investigation. Khawaja states it is loyalty to the three players affected, and particularly his “childhood friend David Warner”, that has led him to speak out.

No doubt there will be more to come on this story – from Warner’s forthcoming autobiography, if not before. Warner has already backed Khawaja’s version of events. At the time of writing, current Australian test captain Pat Cummins, a member of the 2018 team that toured South Africa, has just scheduled a press conference to address the allegation.

Review: Sabr – Usman Khawaja (Penguin)

Khawaja’s compulsion for truth-telling is, however, driven by wider concerns. The book’s title is an Urdu and Arabic word for patience. It is linked to the author’s Islamic faith: his belief God sees everything and consequently one should “never lie”.

His faith also shapes his belief in destiny unfolding in a way fashioned by “the big man”, who is “the greatest of planners”. Though Khawaja does stress the importance of personal resilience, the premise of Sabr is that “our life is only meant to go a certain way”. There is, in his eyes, no such thing as pure luck or “coincidence”. Personal choice, he says, “is the only choice we were ever going to make”.

This puts Khawaja in an unusual position in relation to his personal chronology. Of his wife, a Catholic who converted to Islam on her wedding day, Khawaja says he is “certain that Rachel and I were connected, woven into the fabric of space and time, on a collision course heading right for each other”.

Where most sports autobiographies focus on the ability to seize opportunities and overcome obstacles, Khawaja declares there are “no sliding doors”.

A resilient outsider

Sabr is particularly compelling on Khawaja’s resilience. He writes about managing his chronic arthritis and the psychological burden of being dropped from the Australian team seven times over the course of his career. Yet it is a belief in divine providence that sustains his drive to succeed. He describes his fervent prayers on the eve of important innings.

The book is interesting, in part, because of what it suggests about the complex interface between an Islamic migrant and the secular assumptions of modern Australia. Though he migrated with his family from Pakistan when he was four, Khawaja says he continued to support the Pakistani rather than Australian cricket team until 1999, when he was 13.

His dual citizenship ensured he “really felt like an outsider my entire cricketing career”. He openly chronicles various run-ins with old Australian players who characterised him as a “lazy subcontinent player”, a bad fielder and a poor team man. Ian Chappell, Mark Taylor and Ian Healy come in for some pointed criticism.

Khawaja nevertheless accommodated himself to the team ethic of Australia, while preserving his sense of ethical integrity and self-reliance. He cites Muhammad Ali – who opposed the war in Vietnam, despite the damage this “stance” did to his boxing career – as a role model.

Sandpaper

Chapter 17, simply entitled “Sandpaper”, reveals these tensions at their most acute.

Khawaja tries to avoid specific indictments by using a plural pronoun. “I’m going to use the term ‘we’ throughout this chapter,” he writes, “because ‘we’ are team Australia – although in this book I’m not speaking on behalf of anyone but myself.”

This exposes an obvious contradiction. Khawaja admits collective guilt, while declining to name any particular individual, even though everyone is clearly implicated by what he says.

There are harsh words here for “the fast-bowling cartel (as they call themselves)”. In perhaps the most explosive revelation, Khawaja claims team manager Gavin Dovey agreed they should “cop it as a team”, but “two guys in the team disagreed”. Khawaja says he “knew who those two guys were” and “it showed me their true colours”.

The sandpaper affair itself was something of a storm in a teacup, since all international sides had long been involved with ball tampering of one kind or another. The practice had incurred only minimal sanctions from the International Cricket Council.

As Khawaja notes, the significance of the affair became inflated when the prime minister of the day Malcolm Turnbull, “who had no idea about cricket”, got involved, saying the affair was a “terrible disgrace” to the nation.

Strategic inclusions and exclusions

It is clearly not true for Khawaja to say: “This is my story. Unedited.” On the contrary, it is clear the writing has been carefully designed to avoid pointing fingers and to preserve at least the appearance of collective team spirit, even though the cracks under the surface are easy enough to detect.

Literary scholar Paul John Eakin calls autobiography a slippery genre, because it seems to offer the prospect of unvarnished truth, but is just as artfully structured as any other narrative, with strategic inclusions and exclusions.

Sabr follows this model precisely. When Khawaja appeared on ABC’s 7.30 television program earlier this week, he found it difficult to parry Sarah Ferguson’s probing questions about exactly who in the team knew what. He had to resort to simply declining to answer. His publisher promptly “adjusted” his scheduled media appearances.

Khawaja is generally smart and media-savvy. He has a degree in aviation from the University of New South Wales and a commercial pilot’s licence. His book discusses his interest in physics. The hypothesis of “string theory”, that there are “multiple dimensions […] layered together around us”, fits neatly with his religious beliefs.

A longtime friend of federal treasurer Jim Chalmers, Khawaja describes himself as engaging in a “heated” conversation with prime minister Anthony Albanese about the war in Gaza. But he was shrewd enough to focus his protests on the fate of children there, recognising how everyone would acknowledge they “are 100 per cent innocent”.

He also points out the “hypocrisy” of the International Cricket Council for “picking and choosing” their bans on political or religious signs “on clothing or equipment”, contrasting their tolerance of the Old Testament verses inscribed on Marcus Labuschagne’s bat with their proscription of Khawaja’s peace dove logo.

Changing values

One of the long-term implications of Khawaja’s career was to introduce a sense of relative values into the Australian cricket world. His success suggested mateship and white nationalism were not the only options available.

One of the structural changes in cricket in recent years has been the mingling of professional players from different countries in the Indian Premier League and similar franchise competitions. It may be that the weariness of younger generations toward traditional test cricket is influenced less by diminished attention spans than their impatience with the antiquated paraphernalia of national chauvinism that often surrounds these fixtures.

Khawaja reveals that many of his best friends come from outside Australia. He calls the South African cricketer Hashim Amla, another Islamic outsider in his home country, “the kindest man I have met”. He writes of bantering in Hindi with Indian fast bowler Ishant Sharma. It is not difficult to imagine Khawaja in the future having warmer relationships with some overseas players than with Australian fast bowlers.

In a recent podcast, journalist Peter Lalor, who is acknowledged in Sabr for publicising Khawaja’s support of the Palestinian cause, compared the “outsider” Khawaja to the late Peter Roebuck, the English cricketer and broadcaster, who also had a troubled relationship to cricket authorities.

It is noteworthy that some other cricketers who, like Roebuck, achieved double first-class degrees from Cambridge, consorted awkwardly with traditional cricket cultures. Zafar Ansari, who played three test matches for England, retired at the age of 25, saying he was bored with the repetitive nature of the game. Ed Smith, who also played in three international matches, said he never felt entirely at home in the English professional camp, though he fared better as an administrator and selector.

Khawaja is a different kind of character, of course. He says his success was driven in part by a fierce determination to triumph over antagonists. “If there is one thing I love,” he writes, “it’s proving people wrong.”

It is likely that his status as a fly in the ointment will long outlast the end of his playing career.
Paul Giles does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Tags: Academic Journalism, The Conversation, The Conversation Academic News