Senior players expected the Cricket Australia board to emerge from a meeting last Friday to announce that David Warner’s lifetime captaincy ban had been overturned.
Instead, the ditherers at CA did what ditherers do: they asked its head of integrity to change its own code of conduct, leaving Warner to plead his case to an Independent Code of Conduct Commission at a date yet to be determined … blah blah blah what do you like in the Cox Plate on Saturday?
If only CA had taken as much time to consider things when it slapped Warner, Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft with heavy suspensions following the Newlands sandpaper scandal in March 2018.
Oh, those were heady days, weren’t they? Time was of the essence.
It took a grand total of four days for then CA head of integrity Iain Roy to run an investigation from his hotel room before the board banned Warner and Smith from playing for a year and Bancroft nine months. Smith was additionally banned from captaining his country for two years but Warner, naughty boy that he was, got life.
Four days. That was more than enough for the CA board, which felt empowered under its own constitution or otherwise, to take swift action against the Cape Town Three.
The board looks decidedly different now but, nevertheless, has decided to wrap itself in kilometres of red tape before allowing an independent body to make a call on its own decision from five years ago.
Despite this, it appears a matter of “when” not “if” Warner will captain his country again; most likely in the 50-over format later this summer and then next year’s World Cup in India.
He will, in time, enlighten the Independent Code of Conduct Commission – has a ring to it, doesn’t it? – about how he’s a different cricketer and leader to the one who orchestrated the ball-tampering scandal, but he won’t have to revisit his actions, nor that of his team, during that Test or series or even beyond that.
In doing so, we won’t be any closer to knowing the answer to the question that can truly set Warner (and Smith and Bancroft) free …
Who else knew?
It’s an important question because Australian cricket followers are divided neatly down the middle on Warner and whether he should captain again.
On one side, there’s a firm view that lifetime bans in any sport are too much. Lifetime bans are reserved for the likes of Lance Armstrong (doping) and Hansie Cronje (match-fixing). Even if you’re standing at cover with a Ryobi orbital sander in your pocket, ball manipulation isn’t in the same ballpark.
On the other side, there’s an absolute view that Warner and co. did irreparable harm to the good name of Australian cricket. Cheating is cheating, no matter what, and Warner’s actions that day at Newlands were the straw, nay the branch, that broke the camel’s back. As the chief architect, Warner should never captain again.
Would those very binary positions change if we definitively knew what happened not just at Newlands, but the team’s policy about “ball management”? I think it would.
Those issues were never addressed during Roy’s four-day investigation, nor any subsequent investigation by CA, yet they are at the centre of Warner’s ban.
Instead of standing down the three players pending a wide-reaching and more thorough investigation, CA appeased an angry mob in Australia that included Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and swung the axe.
Apart from Bancroft suggesting in an interview with The Guardian last year that it was “probably self-explanatory” that the bowlers knew, very little light has been shed on the matter.
Bowling coach David Saker told the Herald in response to Bancroft’s claims: “There was a lot of people to blame. It could have been me to blame, it could have been someone else. It could have been stopped and it wasn’t, which is unfortunate … You could point your finger at me, you could point your finger at Boof [then head coach Darren Lehmann], could you point it at other people, of course you could.”
Perhaps CA didn’t want to know how deep it went. It needed to field a team in the fourth Test. Besides, it had its scapegoats and in Warner they had a problem child who had also been front and centre of the bitter pay dispute the previous year.
There’s a belief that players from that period – including and especially Warner – are waiting until they retire before telling their side of the story.
Cricket biographies are often best-selling sports books because they transcend the NRL-AFL divide. Should he feel inclined, Warner’s tell-all will fetch a huge fee. It’s not in his nature to hold back.
If he does captain his country again, Australia Cricketers Association chief executive Todd Greenberg is the one he needs to thank. He started the campaign in January for the captaincy ban to be overturned.
Since then, several players, past and present, have spoken about Warner leading his country once more – including Test captain Pat Cummins.
It’s telling. After Warner was banned from playing for a year, he was so reviled by some teammates many believed he’d never make it back. Now, they want him to lead them.
Doubtless, Greenberg would be bemused it’s taken this long to get an answer out of CA.
In his previous sport of rugby league, of which he was chief executive, the ARL Commission made decisions on a whim. Chairman Peter V’landys makes rule changes after receiving emails from fans.
Cricket moves at the speed of a startled turtle in comparison but expect the question of Warner’s ban to eventually be answered.
As for who knew, that one might never be solved.