The Phnom Penh Post

Warner ‘lost baby after tampering scandal’

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THE wife of disgraced cricketer David Warner revealed on Thursday that she suffered a miscarriag­e in the aftermath of her husband’s part in a ball-tampering scandal that rocked the game.

Candice Warner said the couple lost the baby a week after his tearful press conference in Sydney in late March after he was sent home from Australia’s tour of South Africa and banned for a year.

She attributed the loss to stress and an arduous flight home, describing the couple’s devastatio­n at realising she was miscarryin­g.

“I called Dave to the bathroom and told him I was bleeding. We knew I was miscarryin­g. We held one another and cried,” she told the Australian Women’s Weekly magazine.

“The miscarriag­e was a heartbreak­ing end to a horror tour. The ordeal from the public humiliatio­ns to the ball-tampering had taken its toll and, from that moment, we decided nothing will impact our lives like that again.”

The couple already have two children, Ivy Mae, 3, and Indi Rae, 2, and Warner said she discovered she was pregnant again in Cape Town.

“We were overwhelme­d, knowing another little Warner was on the way,” she said. “I don’t think either of us realised how much we longed for this baby.”

‘Disgusting’ remark

Australia’s tour of South Africa had started badly, with Warner charged with bringing the game into disrepute during the first Test for an altercatio­n with Quinton de Kock. Warner claimed de Kock made a “vile and disgusting” remark about his wife.

“That attack during the first Test when Quinton called me names – I should’ve known it wasn’t going to end well,” Candice Warner said.

She said she was watching on TV with her two children when the balltamper­ing incident flared up during the third Test and she “sat slumped on the bed and wondered if [she] could take any more”.

In the aftermath, her husband wanted to return to Australia with Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft, who were also involved in the scandal, but they were put on separate flights, with the Warner family handed the longest route back.

“We got the longest and tough route. No one knew I was pregnant and Dave did everything to get me home safely, fearing any more strain could affect our unborn child,” she said, adding that she was in “a bad state”.

On arrival in Sydney, they were met with a media scrum, adding to the ordeal. “We’d been assured it was a private exit and we’d managed to leave quietly from Johannesbu­rg,” she told the magazine.

Her husband, banned from state and internatio­nal cricket for his part in the plan to use sandpaper to tamper with the ball, will begin his road to redemption by playing club cricket with Sydney’s Randwick Petersham from September.

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