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David Warner Accuses Cricket Australia of Cover-Up Over 2018 Sandpapergate Probe
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David Warner accuses Cricket Australia of a cover-up over the 2018 ball-tampering scandal. CA says all players had opportunity to speak and will not reopen the investigation.
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Warner reignites Sandpapergate
David Warner accused Cricket Australia of a “cover-up” over the 2018 ball-tampering scandal, escalating a row that has “torn apart the sport.” Warner, who was banned for a year over his part in the “Sandpapergate” incident in Cape Town, said on Instagram that “CA did not interview Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc or Nathan Lyon in their 2018 investigation.” Warner argued that if those bowlers were not interviewed, Cricket Australia could not maintain that “the bowlers didn’t know,” and he said the probe “ran a shoddy investigation.”
Usman Khawaja’s autobiography reopened the dispute this week by alleging that the whole team knew about the plot to rough up the ball with sandpaper to make it swing, and Cricket Australia’s probe had concluded only then-skipper Steve Smith, Warner and Cameron Bancroft were in the know. Pat Cummins, now the Test captain, held a lengthy news conference on Friday to rubbish Khawaja’s latest claims, calling them “100 percent wrong.”
Cummins denies, CA resists
Cricket Australia said it would not reopen its investigation, and the BBC reported that the governing body said all players had been given the chance to come forward.
Cricket Australia’s spokesperson told reporters, “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,” and the spokesperson added that CA “has respected every player and former players’ right to provide their own version of events.”
Warner responded after Cummins’ news conference by saying, “I stick with Uzzie. It’s the truth. The captain threw Uzzie under the bus.”
Warner also said he felt it was “a botched investigation,” while the BBC reported that Khawaja revealed he was not interviewed as part of the investigation despite sitting next to Bancroft in the dressing room.
The Straits Times said CA chief executive Todd Greenberg ruled out reopening the investigation on Tuesday, while Warner’s Instagram allegation focused on whether Hazlewood, Starc and Lyon were formally interviewed.
What is at stake next
Cricket Australia’s stance that it will not reopen the case sets the immediate boundary for the dispute, even as Warner’s accusation targets the 2018 investigation process and the question of whether Hazlewood, Starc and Lyon were interviewed. The controversy also turns on how Khawaja’s autobiography is treated, because the sources say Khawaja alleged the entire Australia team knew about the plot to rough up the ball with sandpaper, and Cummins called those claims “100 percent wrong.” Warner’s comments keep the focus on the bowlers’ knowledge, and he said it “looks like they had decided who they wanted to blame from the very beginning.”
The Straits Times reported that the four bowlers who played in the Cape Town test against South Africa in 2018, Starc, Hazlewood, Pat Cummins and Lyon, issued a joint statement in 2021 denying any knowledge of the ball-tampering plan. The dispute remains unresolved in the sources because Cricket Australia has ruled out reopening, while Warner continues to press that the investigation was “shoddy” and that the “false narrative” that the bowlers had no idea should not stand.