David Warner has pointedly refused to say whether he cheated for Australia before orchestrating the ball-tampering scandal that led to the disgrace and disbandment of his national team.
In a tearful first press conference since being suspended for 12 months and barred from any future leadership role with his country, the former vice-captain repeatedly dodged questions about his precise role in ‘Sandpaper-gate’ and about who else, if anybody, was involved.
If Cricket Australia (CA) had hoped that Warner’s comments would bring a close to a calamitous week, after emotional mea culpas by his fellow conspirators Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft, they were gravely mistaken.
While he was clearly distraught, accepting in a statement that he had made a choice that he would “regret for as long as I live”, his subsequent question-and-answer session became a study in evasion, as Warner resorted time and again to a pre-prepared line that he was “here to take responsibility for my actions on day three at Newlands”.
Later Warner acknowledged that he had offered little clarity but explained that he was following the rules of an official CA review. “I know there are unanswered questions and lots of them,” he tweeted. “In time I will do my best to answer them all. But there is a formal CA process to follow. With so much at stake for my family and cricket I have to follow this process properly.”
