Damn that general public. If it wasn’t for them, David Warner could have served his punishment for ball-tampering in 2018 and now be a free man, allowed to lead cricket teams, beloved and appreciated.
If not for the general public, Cricket Australia could have issued a clear decision based on natural justice and rewarded Warner’s five years of remorse and good behaviour. Without the public and their pesky opinions, it could all be so simple.
Instead, a sizeable chunk of the general public won’t forgive Warner. They call him a cheat to his face and, hurtfully, in front of his wife and daughters. It’s not nice and people shouldn’t do that, but they do. They say mean things about Warner to Cricket Australia as well, and if Cricket Australia commutes his life sentence it will be over their dead bodies.
Wouldn’t the world be a better place if everyone agreed on everything! My view is that Warner has done his time for what he admitted doing. (Not that we know exactly what he admitted about Cape Town in 2018, and what he’d done leading up to it, because CA, in one of those classic original mistakes that sets in train all its subsequent mistakes, never offered any openness or clarity over what did or didn’t, actually, take place, how thoroughly they were allowing themselves to investigate it, and what rocks they didn’t want to turn over.)
But that’s just my view. Many cricket followers take the opposite view, as is their right, and it is they who block Warner’s reinstatement, who continue to protest his presence in Australian colours, and who refuse him the redemption of having a ‘C’ after his name. Even Steve Smith has been forgiven – he tossed the coin on Thursday in Adelaide while Warner steeled himself to convert his anger and resentment into the big score that an enfeebled West Indies attack and perfect batting conditions appeared to serve up to him, by way of apology.
All the money Warner has earned – and the Sandpaper scandal never stopped him from becoming a cricketing plutocrat – hasn’t wiped the stain from what he did in 2018, a culmination of behaviour that had escalated in the preceding years. Nor has he earned those millions from possessing any special insight. His strength as a cricketer has always lain in the clarity of his mind and his eye, the ability to leave the past in the past, the absence of thought.
David Warner bats on day one of the second test. He was out for 21 in the first session.Credit:Getty Images
Off the field, it has not been so easy. Remedying his past errors – or, more precisely, seeking remedy from Cricket Australia – has become his avenue to exculpation. There has not, however, been any open confession, and even given the liberty of putting it all in his own words on social media on Wednesday, when he withdrew from his campaign to regain a leadership role, there was the repetition of “what occurred” and “events that occurred” at Cape Town, nothing along the lines of “what I did”.
It was always a bit odd that Warner sought a restoration of his reputation by being eligible to lead the Sydney Thunder in the Big Bash League. Surely, he couldn’t have been naïve enough to think this would spare his family the nasty words that are, and will continue to be, thrown his way.
This ugly mess, which will haunt Australian cricket for as long as Warner and Smith remain in national teams, was created in those early mismanaged days in 2018. CA was warned, but it tried to get out of jail cheaply. Its failure in those days is now cascading through more mismanagement, more slipperiness, more of the same sneaky fence-sitting, more trying to have it both ways.
A disturbing pattern is emerging between this episode and how Tim Paine was treated at the end of his Test career. Cricket Australia does not want to make a decision, so it calls in an outside “expert” – a lawyer for Warner, a PR dude for Paine – to do the dirty work. Warner, like Paine, had an unpalatable option placed in front of him, forcing the player to take the course that would minimise CA’s inconvenience while passing responsibility to the “expert” who was then quickly cleared from the premises. The annoying general public who won’t leave Warner in peace? They’re not fooled by these evasions, either.
Because it was not dealt with properly at the time, Cape Town just keeps festering. After Smith served his ban, he was permitted to move on. But because Warner’s ban has no limit, there is no moving on. And that section of the public that is still so disappointed in Australian cricket leaders cheating, well, it has a long memory, and it cannot be placed under control. There is no time limit on its feelings of betrayal.
Nor will the cricket ball do what Warner wants. With everything set up for him on the Adelaide Oval, he played a loose shot and nicked one before he could get going. Before the ball even reached the wicketkeeper, he let out a moan. The anguish said more than any prepared statement could have done.
