Australia trio set to appeal as Warner weeps
Smith and Bancroft also talk to lawyers about bans Australia board faces more action on ball-tampering
Australia’s three disgraced cricketers are expected to launch legal actions this week which will ensure that the ball-tampering scandal continues to dominate the sport.
Steve Smith, Cameron Bancroft and David Warner have until the middle of the week to appeal their bans and are in talks with lawyers.
Warner looks set to take action, having said after a press conference in Sydney that he could not answer questions due to the ongoing legal process.
The Australian Cricketers’ Association has hit out at the disciplinary process and haste with which Cricket Australia took action as it faced pressure from the Australian public and the country’s prime minister during an unprecedented week for cricket. The ACA has also said the punishments are far heavier than International Cricket Council regulations for ball-tampering.
Bancroft and Smith have not yet said whether they will appeal and are seeking advice before making a final decision. Reports in Australia over the weekend claimed that Smith did not know of the details of the ball-tampering plan until he saw it unfold on the big screen at Newlands.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported Smith did not know how the plan would be carried out, expressed that he did not like the idea but did nothing to stop it. It was also revealed that Bancroft twice applied sandpaper to the ball, which the match officials decided at the time had not been damaged enough to change.
Warner pointedly refused to say whether he cheated for Australia before orchestrating the scandal that led to the disgrace and disbandment of his national team.
In a tearful first press conference since being suspended for 12 months and barred from any future leadership role with his country, the former vicecaptain repeatedly dodged questions about his precise role in “Sandpapergate” and about who else, if anybody, was involved.
If Cricket Australia (CA) had hoped that Warner’s comments would bring a close to a calamitous week, after emotional mea culpas by his fellow conspirators Smith and Bancroft, it was gravely mistaken.
While he was clearly distraught, accepting in a statement that he had made a choice that he would “regret for as long as I live”, his subsequent question-and-answer session became a study in evasion, as Warner resorted time and again to a pre-prepared line that he was “here to take responsibility for my actions on day three at Newlands”.
Warner broke down repeatedly as he accepted that, in all likelihood, he would never represent Australia again. The opening batsman has received the harshest verdict of the three players implicated, with CA ruling that he was guilty of manipulating a junior player, in Bancroft, and that he even demonstrated to his team-mate how to scuff up the ball with sandpaper.
In a stage-managed press call at the headquarters of Cricket New South Wales, with his wife Candice front and centre, 31-year-old Warner said: “In the back of my mind, I suppose there is a tiny ray of hope that I may one day be given the privilege of playing for my country – but I am resigned to the fact that this may never happen.”
Warner appeared uneasy when pressed on whether the abuse earlier in the tour of Candice, both by South African crowds and allegedly by opponent Quinton de Kock, had contributed to his decision to cheat. “It’s tough for me to talk about where my thoughts were on that day, given the previous circumstances in Durban,” he replied.
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‘Iam responsible for my actions and extremely remorseful. I have let team-mates down, the Cricket Australia support staff, my family and myself down. I am extremely apologetic and I am here to put my hand up to apologise.”
That was David Warner speaking at a press conference. No, not in Sydney yesterday but in London, sitting in a basement room at Kensington’s Royal Garden Hotel in June 2013, where he apologised for punching Joe Root.
That day, Warner stuck to the script, refusing to reveal any more details of what happened late one night in the Walkabout bar in Birmingham, leaving questions unanswered about the incident that linger today.
Five years on, Warner again parroted a pre-prepared line when it was his turn to cry for the cameras and ask for forgiveness for the balltampering role. Once again, he left many questions hanging in the air, unanswered at the end of a week cricket will never forget.
It took around five days, the same length as a Test match, for three Australian cricketers to go from the peak of their profession to the pit of despair.
Mid-afternoon on Saturday in Cape Town. The weekend crowd were enjoying a gripping Test match with South Africa taking control. Saturday at Newlands is like Saturday at the July Lord’s Test. It is the high point of the South African summer. But then footage emerged of Cameron Bancroft stuffing a piece of yellow material down the front of his trousers and the occasion, the match situation and everything else was suddenly unimportant.
How it happened, who knew what and when will be the subject of conspiracy theories and speculation for years. What is certain is that five days later, Bancroft, Steve Smith and Warner were back in Australia punished, humiliated and cast out of their sport for up to a year, or possibly for ever in Warner’s case.
As far as Cricket Australia is concerned, it has the plot for its film noir. Bancroft was the youngster groomed to commit the crime. Smith the golden boy captain brought down by a moment of madness and a blind will to win for his country. Warner was the Moriarty who masterminded the whole thing, finally letting the mask slip to reveal his true colours after one of cricket’s great PR makeovers turned him from the Bulldog to the Reverend.
This was a one-off and nobody outside the circle of three had any clue what was going on. There is nothing else to see here. Action has been taken. Move on.
It matters hugely to Australian cricket – apart from Warner, and the fact is not many people in the sport care about him – that the official line remains intact and it never emerges that Australia’s success has been built on sandpaper.
It must never be disproved that the three acted alone, cooking up the plot in a dressing-room area at Newlands at lunch with support staff, other players and officials milling around. The story must hold that nobody saw Bancroft (or whoever it was) cutting a square of sandpaper and sticking it in his pocket, and Warner had never done this sort of thing before despite CA’s official findings stating he demonstrated “how it could be done” to Bancroft.
It has to remain a coincidence that ball-shining duties had been passed from Warner to Bancroft in Cape Town for cricket reasons and had nothing to do with the fact South Africans had their suspicions about the vice-captain. Fanie de Villiers, the former South Africa bowler, claimed to have tipped off cameramen. Graeme Smith was also believed to have his doubts. Do not forget, he commentated on the Ashes for BT Sport.
It has to remain that Smith and Bancroft told lies in the press conference after the match and misled match officials without any instruction from others.
If all that is proved to be wrong, then Magellan pulling out of a $60million deal last week would be nothing. Sponsors would leave the sport in their droves, it would take years to win back shattered public support.
Warner holds the key. He later took to Twitter to say his refusal to answer questions in Sydney was due to the legal process. The three are expected to appeal against their bans. Warner also smartly gave himself 24 hours’ grace before speaking to the media (unlike Smith and Bancroft, who gave press conferences as soon as they arrived), crucial time to have legal advice that was missing while they were being investigated and punished in South Africa.
Warner must know his days are up as an Australia player. Negotiations will be ongoing with CA about exiting his contractual obligations and securing a pledge from the board to allow him to spend the rest of his career cashing in on Twenty20 leagues around the world. In return, it would be handy if he kept quiet. Not once did he comment on other players being involved or previous examples of ball-tampering. Bancroft and Smith, too, did not comment on each other.
However, the attention is turning away from the players. James Sutherland, the CA chief executive, is under pressure more than at any other time in his 17 years in the job. He took two days before using the word “cheat”, adding to the theory about brand value. We await the start of an independent inquiry examining the culture of Australian cricket that he has presided over for two generations.
Under the headline, “Judgement Day for Cricket’s Suits”, Gideon Haigh wrote in The Australian this weekend: “There’s a certain irony in Sutherland’s rediscovery of the ‘spirit of cricket’, which last year was quietly dropped from CA’s published strategy, replaced by a compound of jaded slogans about ‘how we play’. ‘Be real, smash the boundaries, make every ball count, stronger together.’ At times over the years, CA has given the appearance of caring little about the sport’s image, except as a brand or a product.”
Channel 9 last week decided to buy up rights to Australian Open tennis rather than cricket. CA still has plenty of bidders for its new rights deal, but its negotiating position has been weakened. A redemption story will be good for audience figures – but has that audience run out of patience with its cricket team?
A redemption story will be good for audience figures – but has that audience run out of patience?