Former Australia opener David Warner on Saturday accused Cricket Australia of a “cover-up” and a “shoddy investigation” into the 2018 Cape Town ball-tampering scandal, sharply escalating a dispute reopened by Usman Khawaja’s autobiography. Warner’s Instagram intervention came after current Test captain Pat Cummins rejected Khawaja’s claim that the whole team knew about the sandpaper plot, calling it “100 percent wrong.”
Key Takeaways: Warner says CA did not interview Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc or Nathan Lyon during its 2018 investigation; CA has ruled out reopening the probe; Cummins says Khawaja’s account is wrong, while Warner accuses Cummins of throwing Khawaja “under the bus.”
The row traces back to the third Test in Cape Town in March 2018, when Cameron Bancroft was caught using sandpaper to rough up the ball. A Cricket Australia probe concluded that only then-captain Steve Smith, his deputy Warner and Bancroft were aware of the plan; all three were sent home from South Africa in disgrace and banned. In 2021, Starc, Hazlewood, Lyon and Cummins issued a public statement denying they knew about the scheme.
In his post, Warner said: “As far as I am aware, CA did not interview Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc or Nathan Lyon in their 2018 investigation. 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. That stinks of a cover-up.” He also accused Cummins of throwing close friend Khawaja “under the bus.” Starc said during the week that “we weren’t aware of things being taken on the field”; Hazlewood and Lyon have yet to comment.
Cricket Australia has ruled out reopening its investigation. In a Saturday statement, a spokesperson said: “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.” CA added that it has respected every player’s right to provide their own version of events. The affair leaves unresolved questions over the reputation of Australian cricket, trust inside the team and the transparency of future investigations, with further comments from Hazlewood and Lyon and the Cummins-Khawaja relationship likely to remain in focus.
Source: www.aljazeera.com