Australian cricket thought it had left its great shame behind, burying it in the days after Cameron Bancroft was shown on the big screen in Cape Town putting sandpaper down his pants.

Cricket Australia acted swiftly at the time, suspending the young batter, his captain Steve Smith and vice-captain David Warner. Too swiftly, according to Usman Khawaja, whose book released on Tuesday criticised the investigation while Warner called it “rushed and botched”.

Khawaja’s pursuit of justice for his childhood friend Warner has not just reopened old wounds. It threatens to destroy the reputations of Australian cricket’s most revered, while dividing the tight community into separate camps and igniting issues still to be resolved almost 10 years after the humiliation of Cape Town.

‘What we saw was unbelievable’

Ball-tampering at the time was widespread, an arms race that was pushing the boundaries of not what was within the rules, but what might be enforced by umpires and officials with little desire to expose the…