SYDNEY (The Thursday Times) — Former Australia vice-captain David Warner has said Cricket Australia’s 2018 investigation into the ball-tampering scandal “stinks of a cover-up”, claiming that, as far as he knew, three of the team’s bowlers were never interviewed.
“As far as I am aware, CA did not interview Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc or Nathan Lyon in their 2018 investigation,” Warner wrote on Instagram on Saturday. “If that’s correct, then how can CA push the idea that the bowlers didn’t know?”
“It looks like they had decided who they wanted to blame from the very beginning, ran a shoddy investigation to serve the purpose and now they want to maintain the false narrative that the bowlers had no idea,” he wrote. “That stinks of a cover-up.”
Cricket Australia stood by its inquiry. “As we have stated previously, all players were given the opportunity to speak at the time of the initial investigation and have had the ability to come forward with new evidence in the eight years since,” a spokesperson said. The board added that it had respected every player’s right to give their own version of events, and it has said it will not reopen the investigation.
The row was reignited by Usman Khawaja, who wrote in his autobiography, Sabr, that the whole team knew sandpaper was being used on the ball during the third Test against South Africa at Newlands, Cape Town, in March 2018. Khawaja has said he was not interviewed either, even though he sat next to Cameron Bancroft, the player caught with sandpaper on the field, in the dressing room. He has refused to name names.
The four frontline bowlers in that Test, Hazlewood, Starc, Lyon, and Pat Cummins, have always said they did not know about the plan. At a news conference in Sydney on Friday, Cummins, Australia’s Test captain since 2021, said he had been interviewed in 2018 and called Khawaja’s claims “complete and utter nonsense”.
Warner hit back within hours. Speaking on television before Australia’s first one-day international against England in Perth, he said he would “stick by Uzzy and what he’s written in that book”, adding: “I actually feel that the captain today actually threw Uzzy under the bus.” “I felt like it was a botched investigation. It was a quick one to get it over and done with,” he said.
Warner, Steve Smith, and Bancroft were the only players punished after the 2018 inquiry, which found that the three knew of the plan in advance. Smith and Warner were banned for a year and Bancroft for nine months. “All three of us have paid a big price in this,” Warner said on Friday. “We’ve got to live with these consequences daily and we’ve been served a life punishment.”
The row has drawn in voices from outside Australia. On Saturday, Pakistan great Wasim Akram questioned Cummins’ denial, saying any experienced bowler would know straight away that sandpaper had been used on the ball.
