Australian cricketer Scott Boland brushed off Usman Khawaja’s claim that his home state Victoria once perfected the “dark arts” of ball-tampering.
Khawaja’s memoir, “Sabr,” drops on Tuesday and will include allegations that Australian domestic cricket was riddled with cheating before Sandpapergate.
In a snippet of the autobiography reported by CODE Sports, Khawaja called the Vics of the 2000s and 2010s “genius” at getting the best out of an old ball.
Boland – who debuted for Victoria in 2011 – accepts cheating can occur at lower levels but insists nothing “untoward” happened during his time with the Vics.
“Yeah, I don’t know what the dark arts are,” Boland said with a laugh.
“I think in general the last 10 years, probably since Cape Town, reverse swing has really gone out of the game.
“I don’t know, if you went back to club cricket without cameras, you’d probably see a lot of things that would happen.
“From my point of view, I haven’t really seen anything untoward.”
Retired Australian fast bowler Chadd Sayers supported Khawaja’s recollection of the now-infamous 2018 Cape Town Test.
However, there has been no fresh response from Aussie bowlers Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon since their joint statement in 2021.
Cricket Australia is understood to be waiting until the official release of Sabr before making any formal reply.
Regardless, Boland confident Australia can block out the headlines and bounce back from its series loss to South Africa against New Zealand this summer.
“I can’t see it being too much of a distraction, it was eight years ago, the guys have played a lot of Test cricket since then,” Boland said.
“I don’t see it being too big of a distraction.”
The first Test between Australia and New Zealand starts in Perth on December 9.
