The 12th man who carried the sandpaper just made Cummins' denial much harder to hold

Until Sunday, Sandpapergate 2026 had a cast of people with obvious angles. Usman Khawaja has a book out. David Warner served a ban he has always felt was unfair. Pat Cummins is the captain of the team being accused.

Chadd Sayers is none of those things. He played one Test, in Johannesburg, the match after Cape Town. In 2018 he was the reserve seamer who ran the drinks.

That is exactly why his account, given to SEN radio before the second ODI in Adelaide and reported by ESPNcricinfo and BBC Sport, matters. He says he did more than know about the sandpaper. He says he carried it off the field.

Strip it down and there are three separate claims, and they are not equally strong.

One: the sandpaper was used at Port Elizabeth too. Sayers was 12th man in the second Test at what is now Gqeberha. He told SEN that Bancroft handed him the sandpaper to take off, and that it "wasn't planned". This backs the line in Khawaja's book that it was used in two Tests, not one. It is also the claim he can speak to most directly, because it is about his own hands.

Two: there was a long meeting after Cape Town. Sayers recalls the team sitting in the dressing room for "60 to 90 minutes" after the day's play, talking about what had happened and what came next. On Friday, Cummins said he did not remember any meeting about taking collective responsibility. Both cannot be fully right.

Three: everyone knew. This is the biggest claim and the softest one. Sayers frames it as belief ("I believe", "I'm pretty confident"), built on the logic that reverse swing needs the whole fielding side to look after the ball. That is a reasonable argument. It is not proof that any named bowler knew.

The same day, Warner went back to Instagram to sharpen his "cover-up" claim from Saturday. As ESPNcricinfo reported, he now says the point was that he was never told whether the bowlers had been interviewed, and asks why CA did not give the banned players all the evidence.

That is a small retreat on the facts and a bigger push on the process. And former Test quick Jason Gillespie told BBC Sport that the public interest suggests the saga is "far from over" and that Cricket Australia, not the players, should be the ones fronting up.

Sayers' most important claim is not "everyone knew". It is Port Elizabeth.

Cricket Australia's 2018 investigation was built around Cape Town, where Bancroft was caught on camera. If the sandpaper was also on the field less than two weeks earlier at Port Elizabeth, as both Khawaja and now Sayers say, that is a second Test the original inquiry was never set up to examine. Todd Greenberg's line that there is "no compelling reason" to reopen anything was a lot easier to say before a squad member described handling the evidence himself.

The scorecards make a second point nobody has made loudly enough: if this was a team plan, it did not work. Across Port Elizabeth and Cape Town, Australia's four frontline bowlers took 30 wickets at 34.7 and lost both Tests, the second by 322 runs. Starc took three wickets for 304. South Africa passed 300 three times. Cummins was the one bowler who thrived, with 11 at 21.5, and his best match of the series came in Johannesburg, after the sandpaper was gone: 9 for 141. Whatever was done to the ball, it was not why Cummins took wickets.

That cuts both ways. It does not prove the bowlers were in the dark. But it does mean the "they must have known because the ball was reversing" argument is weaker than it sounds, because the ball was not doing much for Australia either way.

Where it bites is the meeting. Cummins has staked his credibility on not remembering a collective-responsibility discussion. Sayers remembers one lasting up to 90 minutes. That is a factual dispute, not a moral one, and CA could settle it by saying what the 2018 interviews covered. Australia play England in the third ODI in Hobart on November 18. Expect the captain to be asked about Sayers before he is asked about England.

Three members of the 2018 squad have now said publicly that the whole side knew: Khawaja, Warner and Sayers. On the other side are Cummins, Starc and the 2021 joint statement from the four bowlers.

Sayers says he is "neutral" and only telling his side. Fine. But a neutral witness with a specific memory of the object is the hardest kind for an organisation to wave away. CA's best option is still the same one it has refused all week: say what it asked, and who it asked, in 2018.