There have been recent comments recently by David Warner on the repercussions concerning the Sandpaper Gate incident, and this has brought up the question of why he made them now instead of earlier when such other people as Cameron Bancroft and Steve Smith & Clarke have also suffered a lot.
The Australian Super 8 tournament was getting ready to hit the ground when Warner told about how he had decided to drag all the blame for 2018 ball tampering scandal upon himself.
Speaking during an interview, Warner pointed out that he has been under criticism since then. In an interview, he expressed dissatisfaction with this, stating that since returning to cricket in 2018. He has been going through a lot of criticism implying that it could be motivated by personal hatred from some individuals towards him or his country’s cricket team. “I’ve probably been the only one copping a lot of flak coming back since 2018. I’ve always been that person who has copped it whether it’s people who don’t like the Australian cricket team or don’t like me,.” Warner said via Fox Sports ahead of Australia’s Super 8 clash with Bangladesh.
Cameron Bancroft and Steve Smith were also embroiled in a ball-tampering controversy at Cape Town Test in 2018 where David Warner was involved too. The punishments included one-year bans for Warner and Smith by Cricket Australia, while Bancroft was excluded for nine months. Also, Warner would never lead any side again due to lifetime ban.
Having faced similar pressures himself once upon a time, Michael Clarke responded to these statements during ESPN’s ‘Around The Wicket’. Clarke admitted that although Davey did experience significant pressure. His viewpoint is unfair if taken literally because other players have suffered as well. Apart from highlighting what happened to Bancroft and Smith’s careers, Clarke said: “I understand where Davey is coming from. I think parts of what he said are fair enough. They don’t think he has got the timing right. I don’t think it is fair to say that he is the only one who’s copped it. I think Cameron Bancroft has certainly copped it, and it is the reason he is not in the Australian Test team, because of what happened years ago. Steve Smith, obviously, copped it and lost the Australia captaincy,” Clarke said.
In this context of the tournament, Clarke suggested that Warner might have been better off waiting to make his comments after the World Cup rather than now. His concern was also about disrupting attention from their performance currently on display by raising such issues at this point.
The timing may be wrong here Davey has definitely received a lot of flak for this but maybe later would’ve been in my opinion a more appropriate time for this talk rather than during this critical period where we are trying to retain our focus on winning matches at CWC 2019. There are probably other players in the team that would prefer for this to be not spoken about right now,” added Clarke.
Australian cricket history still bears an imprint of ball-tampering scandal which had huge implications for Warner’s, Smith’s and Bancroft’s careers.
