WARNER WAS THE CHEATING, LYING, BALL-TAMPERING MASTERMIND

Bad boy batsman hatched dastardly plan & gave sandpaper demo..and Smith failed to stop him

DAVID WARNER has been fingered as the lying, cheating mastermind behind Australia’s balltampering plan with a rapsheet as long as a strip of sandpaper.

And it was sandpaper not tape that Cameron Bancroft was instructed to use by Warner, who not only hatched the plan but then demonstrated to the junior player how to go about it.

All the while Steve Smith, the captain, stood there and went along with the scheme without the moral compass nor the backbone to recognise what they were proposing was plain wrong.

Cricket Australia have laid bare the ugly truth of the saga in a damning statement that concludes with 12-month bans from international and domestic cricket for Smith and Warner plus and nine-month exile for Bancroft.

These are stiff penalties for the trio, but let us be perfectly clear, it is not just for balltampering. It is for lying and cheating and scheming and bringing the game into the utmost disrepute.

It is a shot across the bows for any Australian cricketer who thinks they can do what they like with impunity. And that was clearly the case for Warner, who has taken the brunt of the charges laid by Cricket Australia and who may never play for his country again.

Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland (right) finally brought himself to describe the players’ actions as “cheating” but remains convinced the three sanctioned were the only ones involved.

And despite Warner demonstrating to Bancroft how to alter the condition of the ball, Sutherland and his head of integrity are prepared to believe the claim this was an isolated incident and had never happened before.

They are also happy to believe head coach Darren Lehmann had no idea of the plan and when he spoke with 12th man Peter Handscomb through a walkie-talkie during the third Test in South Africa it was to ask: “What the f***k is going on?”

There has been support from within Australian cricket circles for Lehmann – former skipper Allan Border described him as “one of the good guys”.

Yet questions are bound to be asked of how he could allow his team environment to degenerate to the extent that at least three players were capable of such skulduggery.

Sutherland confirmed there would be a further probe into the culture of the Australia team at the end of the South Africa tour. That is perhaps where Lehmann’s position will come under more threat. After all it was Lehmann (below) who took over as coach when Mickey Arthur was sacked after Warner punched Joe Root in a bar in 2013. Once again Warner is the central figure as others lose their jobs, with Smith banned from holding any position of responsibility in Australian cricket for two years.

Lehmann is the coach who oversaw batsman Warner’s transformation from ‘Bull’ to ‘Reverend’ and back to a more familiar attack dog, and has been entirely comfortable with his players’ conduct over the past few years.

Perhaps if he knew nothing of the balltampering he ended up trusting them a little too much.