Former Australia National Cricket Team opener Usman Khawaja made a series of surprising claims about the infamous Sandpapergate scandal, which led Cricket Australia to ban Steve Smith, David Warner, and Cameron Bancroft for months.

Khawaja, in his statement, mentioned that it was not the first time they fabricated the ball. According to the former batter, in a Port Elizabeth Test match against South Africa, Australia used sandpaper to damage the surface of the ball.

Usman Khawaja explains how they used to damage the ball

In his words on the pages, Usman Khawaja wrote that Cameron Bancroft volunteered the ball tampering in that match. As per Khawaja's claims, during the interval, when everyone was outside the ground, Bancroft walked onto the ground and did something with the ball. Because of the sandpaper, one side of the ball went so rough that it started reverse swing too early in the match.

"The next session, we absolutely went through the South Africans. Bangers had walked onto the field after the break, picked up the ball that the umpires had left on the field, and given it a few twists and turns. The ball came up a treat. The shiny side was shiny and, thanks to sandpaper, the reverse side was really rough and dry," Khawaja wrote, as quoted by Cricinfo.

“Every time during the session the ball was passed to me at gully, I’d take a look and think, Wow, even I could reverse swing this ball. It was ridiculous. The bowlers then went to work and bowled beautifully. Reversing it around corners. We got four wickets for 28 runs,” he added.

Sharing a conversation with his teammates after taking a wicket, Usman Khawaja wrote in his autobiography that the ball was moving so much at one point that one of the Aussies asked not to do anything with the ball.

“It was moving so much that, at one point, one of the bowlers said in the huddle after a wicket, ‘Guys, it’s going heaps now. Just don’t do anything else to it, because it’s silly how much it’s going.’ Most of us laughed. (And we weren’t planning to do anything else. The damage had been done to the ball straight after the break. The former cricketer mentioned.

Sandpaper used in multiple Test matches?

Just a couple of days ahead of the launch of his autobiography, which was released on Tuesday, Usman Khawaja stunned everyone by saying that not only Smith, Warner and Bancroft, but everyone in the Australian cricket team was well aware of the fact that they were going to tamper with the ball with sandpaper.

If Usman Khawaja's claims are to be believed, then in another Test match against South Africa, the Aussies applied the same trick to trick the opposing batters. Somehow, the cheating remained unnoticed.

At St George’s Park, South Africa suffered a dramatic fall against Australia in 2018. In the final session of the day, the Proteas lost their 4 wickets for only 28 runs. while replying to Australia’s first-innings total of 243.

He further wrote in his book that they did get caught cheating in Cape Town, but that doesn't mean that it was their first time tampering with the ball.

“I know what you’re probably thinking right now. Didn’t you guys get caught in Cape Town, not Port Elizabeth? Yes, we did, but who said we didn’t do it in the game before as well?” he added.