MY WHATSAPP SEX GROUP SHAME

TOM KOHLER-CADMORE CRICKET INTERVIEW

ToM Kohler-cadmore has revealed his relief at being given a second chance at international level 12 months after feeling like his career was ‘crashing down’.

Last January, the Yorkshire batsman was suspended indefinitely from all england-related selection and was subsequently fined £2,000 for bringing the game into disrepute, along with Nottinghamshire’s Joe clarke, after being named in court as members of a Whatsapp group that logged sexual conquests with women.

While neither was charged with any criminal offence, their former Worcestershire team-mate alex hepburn was found guilty of rape at a retrial and jailed for five years last april.

however, speaking for the first time in depth about the unseemly episode, 25- year- old Kohler- cadmore, who arrived in australia for an eight-match tour with england Lions yesterday, expressed his regret and admitted he thought his behaviour in 2017 would end his dream of playing for his country. Kohler-cadmore and clarke had just finished training with england’s second string at the ecB’s Loughborough academy base when team management told them they were being withdrawn from the squad on the eve of the tour of India.

‘I got a phone call from andy flower about half-four one afternoon. I knew the trial was going on, but I had no court appearance scheduled, so I was never in the position of thinking that I was in any danger of anything like that,’ he recalls.

‘flower asked my involvement. I told him everything I knew about the Whatsapps and then he said to me that I was being suspended from the tour because of it. It was very hard to take because I had built up my entire career to be in the Lions and hopefully push on to england and it felt like everything was crashing down.

‘I didn’t want to look at my phone because every message I was getting felt like bad news. I was thinking, “This is never going to end”. I was worrying whether I would be sacked.

‘Then, with the retrial, it pushed everything further back. It was a really stressful period and I couldn’t imagine what Joe was going through.’

closure of sorts for the pair came last July when a cricket discipline commission meted out punishment for their involvement. as part of it they were forced to attend educational classes on sexual consent, but from a playing perspective their four-match bans had been served in absentia in India, making them available for selection.

Kohler-cadmore says knowing ‘there was no longer a black cross against my name’ spurred him on in the latter stages of the 2019 season, one in which he finished with 828 championship runs at 39.42, second only to Gary Ballance at Yorkshire.

also named as the club’s Twenty20 captain, he responded by averaging 62.14, the highest of any batsman to score more than 365 runs in the Vitality Blast.

In contrast, clarke struggled. The 23-year-old was dropped for Nottinghamshire’s home quarter-final win over Middlesex in the Blast and only lifted his championship average into the 30s with twin hundreds against

Warwickshire in the final home game of the campaign.

he has not made either of the Lions squads dispatched to experience australian conditions ahead of the 2021-22 ashes tour.

ecB performance director Mo Bobat said: ‘ There were no disciplinary reasons why we didn’t pick him. We don’t draw lines through anybody.’

Now Kohler-cadmore says: ‘I want to use my mistakes to try to stop someone else getting into a similar situation.’ he has addressed the Yorkshire academy on their use of social media and volunteered to speak at the Professional cricketers’ association pre- season rookie camps once he has returned from the eight-match tour Down Under.

‘If I can help young lads by giving them advice or knowledge, then it’s a positive to come out of a bad situation,’ Kohler-cadmore says.

‘I was in the wrong. We all had our part to play in the group and it was meant as a bit of a joke between us. I know it’s not a joke now. I was the one who created the group but it was never meant to have any outcome like that. It was just us three being young, single lads. We were naive.’

‘I know the Whatsapp group was a terrible idea but at the time it was just messages between me and some friends in private. obviously it was in really bad taste, so I am not hiding behind that. for me, it’s about learning from stuff like that.

‘The whole period hit me hard and that’s put a good perspective on my career, given me more drive and desire to be back.

‘hopefully I can show in australia what I can do and reach my ambition of playing for england.’