Pat Cummins spoke for 70 minutes at a press conference today. (Getty Images: Darrian Traynor)
If nothing else, nobody can ever say that Pat Cummins didn't front up and face the music.
For 70 minutes he stood there, smiling through whatever other emotion was boiling inside of him, disarming with charm and eloquence and just enough humour for the situation at hand. He took the questions until they dried up.
He lifted the lid on cricket's uncomfortable history with ball tampering, detailing specific examples he had seen within Test and Sheffield Shield cricket. He said he believed Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft were punished much too harshly by Cricket Australia.
He spoke to the 2018 Australian team's "ugly underbelly", addressed allegations of systemic racism within the sport, and spoke about the culture of casual verbal abuse that stretched all the way to suburban club cricket.
Cummins provided a detailed floor plan of the Newlands dressing rooms, and mustered a laugh despite his obvious distaste for the cameras which captured he and his wife conversing on the street.
He pledged to be as open as possible, to dig into the game's nuances — he used that word a lot — to explain as much of what happened in that Cape Town Test match as he could.
And his verdict, repeated multiple times and with precise wording, was clear: Pat Cummins did not know sandpaper was being used to tamper with the ball, and Usman Khawaja's version of events is incorrect.
Pat Cummins rejected allegations made by Usman Khawaja in his book Sabr. (ABC News)
Pat Cummins rejected allegations made by Usman Khawaja in his book Sabr. (ABC News)
Was he telling the truth? Who really knows. David Warner says he wasn't.
The technicality Cummins and his fellow bowlers have relied upon since they released their first statement of denial in 2021 was that they did not know "sandpaper had been brought out onto the field". Those words have been repeated often this week, presented carefully each time.
By Khawaja's version of events, as printed in his book Sabr, that leaves some wriggle room in which perhaps there was wider knowledge sandpaper was being used on the sidelines in breaks of play when the umpire had left the ball on the boundary.
But Cummins was questioned about that too, and once again had a firm and unflinching answer.
"That was news to me this week. I had no idea," Cummins said.
"Even chatting to a couple of the guys, that was a revelation to ourselves. That was one of the things that really surprised us because that doesn't happen anymore; the umpires give the ball to you out in the middle."
The good news is that is a fact someone will be able to check.
Somewhere in the SuperSport archives there will surely be footage of the players coming onto the ground after the breaks in play during that series, and surely in that it will be clear to see precisely when the ball is exchanged between umpire and players.
The bad news is that is just about the only fact that can be checked. Everything else is hearsay, one man's word against another, a civil war whose weapons are alternate offerings of "my truth" and "my story".
Cummins suggested the past eight years have weighed on Khawaja, and hinted that may be because, as Khawaja expressed in his book, he specifically knew about the plan to bring sandpaper onto the field and even warned Cameron Bancroft to be careful.
What does Khawaja think about that pretty loaded suggestion? We will surely find out soon enough, either on Instagram or on the next stop on the book tour.
David Warner says Pat Cummins threw Usman Khawaja under the bus. (Getty Images: Paul Kane)
David Warner says Pat Cummins threw Usman Khawaja under the bus. (Getty Images: Paul Kane)
We already know what Warner thinks. He said he believed Cummins threw Khawaja under the bus.
This just days after Khawaja had to deny he had thrown Cummins and co under the bus. At this point, there is not a member of the Australian cricket team who does not reside beneath a bus.
Warner said on Fox Cricket he would not be able to move on until the truth came out. The truth, he says, is what is written in Khawaja's book.
Warner was given the opportunity to expound on that truth in his own words, but did not take it, suggesting instead a future book of his own would eventually do that job.
It's all a total mess. Social media reaction to Cummins's conference suggests the Australian public, growing increasingly fatigued by it all, has long since made up its mind on what really went on in Cape Town and is past the point of being swayed by new information.
At some point, most likely when all of these players are comfortable in retirement and these squabbles make up part of the nostalgia tour rather than dominate the discourse, we may wonder what all the fuss was about.
The biggest error of the Cummins Q and A was his belief that his appearance would allow everyone to draw a line under the affair and move on.
That's not happening. We're dealing with hurt feelings here, fractured relationships and bruised egos and nebulous concepts of truth and justice. You better pick your side, if you haven't already, because this is never going away.