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

Résumé détaillé

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.

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…

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