Michael Clarke has blasted Cricket Australia’s messy review of David Warner’s captaincy ban and accused the governing body of double standards.
Warner, Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft were embroiled in the infamous sandpaper saga of 2018 in South Africa, but only one the former copped a lifetime leadership ban over it.
Smith will captain Australia in the second Test against the West Indies on Thursday as skipper Pat Cummins is injured.
Warner wanted his ban overturned but this week gave up on his appeal, claiming he didn’t want to make his family “the washing machine for cricket’s dirty laundry”.
The 36-year-old opening batsman accused the independent review panel assembled for his hearing of trying to make it “a public lynching”.
Clarke went into bat for his former teammate and slammed Cricket Australia’s inconsistent approach.
“You can tell he’s disappointed and frustrated,” Clarke said on Big Sports Breakfast.
“I think the other thing that probably hurts a little bit more is the fact Steve Smith is going to captain this Test match.
“I can understand Davey’s disappointment. In regards to where Davey is with his age, he’s unfortunately missed out on the captaincy opportunity in my opinion.
“I don’t think that’s the concern, it’s the fact it’s taken so long to process this or to get to where it’s at.
“I see it as very inconsistent. I find it very hard to believe it’s okay for one but not okay for the other to have a leadership role.
“If CA decided all the guys involved in what went down in South Africa, none of them were going to play a leadership role, I think that’s a fair call.
“But if it’s okay for one, if it’s okay for Smithy, it’s got to be ok for (Cameron) Bancroft and it’s got to be okay for Warner.
“I don’t know if it’s fair to make David Warner the complete scapegoat and say everyone else can go back to normal.
“We’ll forgive you but we won’t forgive Davey.”
Warner withdraws from ‘public lynching’ | 02:30
Clarke admitted he wasn’t 100 per cent supportive of any of the three being involved in a leadership role.
The former Australian captain predicted the sandpaper scandal would linger until all the players involved in the infamous series retire.
“There’s so much around how that was handled that was just not the right way,” Clarke said.
“Starting from doing the crime – let’s start there. How does it go away, don’t say anything.
“(Former South African captain) Faf du Plessis just wrote a book and it’s in his book.
“The fact that there’s (only) bits and pieces of what went down is out there to protect so many people is the problem with all of this.
“If they want to make it public, the whole lot should be made public from start to finish. If it keeps coming up how do you move on? How does cricket move on?
“Unfortunately for this Australian team, a lot of players that were involved then are involved now. So really it seems that until they retire this is just going to keep coming up because there’s so many questions around what went down.”
