'Don't want to speculate' - Handscomb, Root keep distance from fresh sandpaper claims

The wait goes on to find out when Australia captain Pat Cummins will address the new revelations around the 2018 sandpaper controversy, as the man who led the cultural review which followed events in South Africa says that if what Usman Khawaja has alleged in his autobiography is true, then he was "lied to."

The day after Mitchell Starc became the first of the active players who were part of the 2018 tour to speak, where he denied knowledge of sandpaper being used at any stage, Peter Handscomb politely declined to offer further comment after making a century for Victoria at the MCG.

Handscomb was one of the reserve players the day Cameron Bancroft was caught on TV and was told over the walkie-talkie by coach Darren Lehmann to run a message to the middle asking what was happening.

"Look, I appreciate you have to ask these questions," he said. "I've had a nice day today, and it's not really something that I want to comment on right now. I'll sort of just let the powers of people do their thing."

Asked whether the revelations do more harm than good, he said: "I mean, things come up all the time. People are allowed to talk about what they want to talk about. That's up to them. So, you know, in professional cricket, where you deal with a lot of noise, you do have to move on. So everyone [is] dealing with it in their way."

He added he hadn't reached out to any of the other players but said: "I'm sure their phones are probably going mental anyway."

Across the other side of the country, Joe Root also deflected questions when he was asked about the 2017-18 Ashes, where Khawaja has claimed Australia were lifting the quarter seam and that "the whole world was doing whatever little they could" to find reverse swing.

"I wasn't in that [Australia] dressing room, I don't know what went on," Root said ahead of the ODI series against Australia. "I don't want to speculate. My focus is with this team right now and what we've got coming up.

"In terms of everything that's happening or come out in the last little while, we obviously have no idea, and it's all speculation. Our focus and our concerns are on this three-match series."

Asked about whether all teams were tampering at the time, he said: "I can only speak from my own experiences and that's not how I feel, no."

Some of the more eye-catching comments that emerged on Wednesday came from Simon Longstaff, who led the cultural review into Australian cricket, which was undertaken after the fallout from the South Africa tour.

In a column for the Australian Financial Review, Longstaff stressed that the terms of reference for The Ethics Centre review "explicitly excluded any investigation of the specific events that led to our inquiry" as they had been investigated and concluded by Cricket Australia (CA).

But he added: "Even so, we picked up whispers - very few and very faint - that, perhaps, the public record did not tell the full story. Given that we were precluded from straying from our task, the best we could do was circle back to some of those whom we had interviewed to offer them the opportunity to amend their statements about what had occurred.

"I am bound by ongoing duties of confidentiality not to name the people with whom I subsequently spoke. All I can say is that if what Khawaja alleges turns out to be true, then I was also lied to. In the face of explicit denials that there was anything more to be said on the matter, we were left with "whispers" … and nothing more."

@wearetrackradio @StuartBroad8 @markpougatch I couldn't agree more and that's hard for me to say!— David Warner (@davidwarner31) November 10, 2026

Meanwhile, David Warner also commented again via social media when he replied to a post involving an interview with Chris Broad, father of Stuart, where he took aim at Lehmann by referencing both 2018 and the reaction to Broad's edge that wasn't given out at Trent Bridge in the 2013 Ashes.

"And there he was in 2013, taking the moral high ground against my son, where he played the Australian game of nicking the ball and waiting for the umpire to give him out, and he got given not out on that occasion, and then [Lehmann] came out in the media saying 'we're going to make him cry when he comes to Australia next,'" Chris Broad told Track Radio.

"And here he is, the coach of the Australian cricket team that brought sandpaper out onto the field of play and denied any knowledge of this happening. I'm very angry at Darren Lehmann in this respect."

On X, Warner responded: "I couldn't agree more and that's hard for me to say!"

Khawaja arrived in Sydney on Wednesday to continue promoting the book after a tense interview on ABC's 7.30 Report the previous evening. In response to reports that TV and radio interviews as part of the book tour had been dropped, the publishers, Penguin, told ABC "we've just had to make some adjustments, but no major cancellation of the tour at all."

Mitchell Marsh, who was in the Test side on the 2018 tour, is the next significant name set to front the media when he does his captain's press conference on Thursday ahead of the first ODI in Perth.