As Australia’s men’s 50-over cricket side prepared to kick off a highly anticipated three-match one-day international series against England on Friday, the lingering shadow of the 2018 Cape Town ball-tampering scandal, widely dubbed “sandpapergate,” dominated pre-match press briefings and public discourse this week, reignited by newly released claims from former batter Usman Khawaja’s autobiography. Thirty-five-year-old all-rounder Mitchell Marsh, who is stepping in as stand-in ODI skipper for the opening fixture in place of regular captain Pat Cummins, faced repeated questioning about his recollections of the 2018 incident during a Thursday media appearance, but consistently declined to share any new details about his experience of the saga. Marsh, who was part of Australia’s bowling unit on the day the team was caught using sandpaper to alter the condition of the ball to generate reverse swing during that year’s South Africa Test, told assembled reporters he had no intention of revisiting the events of nearly seven years prior. “This is my choice not to go back there,” Marsh stated. “Who knows, maybe I will write a book one day to share my side of things. I know there’s been a lot of noise around this week, and I respect that certain people have chosen to tell their stories, but I’ve moved on, and my sole focus right now is preparing the team for our match against England tomorrow. I hope my decision not to rehash these old events today is respected.” Cummins, who has not spoken publicly at length about Khawaja’s new allegations since the autobiography launched, announced via social media that he and Cricket Australia would host an impromptu press conference early Friday morning (22:30 Thursday GMT) to address the controversy. “I’ve taken some time to work through the full, long list of Uzzy’s allegations to understand their full extent, so that I can respond properly to all questions from the media,” Cummins wrote. Cricket Australia’s interim chair David Boon, a former Australian Test batter, moved swiftly this week to publicly reaffirm full support for Cummins’ leadership, pushing back against any suggestions the scandal’s resurgence could threaten his captaincy tenure. “We absolutely stand behind Pat,” Boon told *The Australian* newspaper. “He has been an exemplary captain, leading this team with integrity and enormous success across his time in the role, and there is zero question about our full confidence in him continuing in that position.” The renewed public debate sparked by Khawaja’s memoir centers on longstanding unaddressed questions over whether Cummins and the other three leading bowlers who remain core members of Australia’s international set-up – Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, and Nathan Lyon – had prior knowledge of the 2018 plan to use sandpaper on the match ball. The four players released a joint statement back in 2021 asserting that they “did not know a foreign substance was taken on to the field” during the Cape Town Test. But in his new book, Khawaja states that “it was all of us” who bore collective responsibility for the incident, revealing that the team had held explicit discussions about using sandpaper to rough up the ball to encourage reverse swing during the Test series in the lead-up to the day the tampering was caught. The controversy has completely overshadowed the build-up to the high-profile bilateral ODI series, which is scheduled to get underway at 03:30 GMT on Friday. England’s stand-in skipper Harry Brook told reporters his squad was deliberately tuning out the off-field drama to stay focused on their competitive goals. “I haven’t really followed much of that debate at all,” Brook said. “Obviously I’ve heard bits of the conversations going around, but none of us were in that Australian dressing room back then, so we have no way of knowing exactly what happened. We’re just here to focus on our own preparation, and we’re excited for the big challenge of playing against one of the best sides in the world.”