Warner questions why Hazlewood, Starc and Lyon were not interviewed in Sandpapergate probe

New Delhi: Former Australia opener David Warner has accused Cricket Australia (CA) of conducting a flawed investigation into the 2018 ball-tampering scandal, questioning why senior fast bowlers Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc and Nathan Lyon were allegedly not interviewed during the inquiry.

Usman Khawaja sparked a major controversy with the release of his autobiography, Sabr, which reopened the 2018 South Africa ball-tampering scandal. He said knowledge of the ball-tampering plan went far beyond the three sanctioned players — Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft — claiming it involved everyone in the dressing room.

In an Instagram post on Saturday, Warner challenged the governing body’s assertion that the bowlers had no prior knowledge of the plot, arguing that the investigation’s approach raised questions about how responsibility was assigned in the aftermath of the Cape Town Test.

Warner, who was handed a 12-month suspension alongside Steve Smith following the scandal in South Africa, took issue with the suggestion that the frontline bowlers were unaware of the plan to alter the ball’s condition. He questioned the basis on which Cricket Australia arrived at that conclusion, pointing to the absence of interviews with three senior members of the bowling group.

“As far as I am aware, CA did not interview Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc or Nathan Lyon in their 2018 investigation. If that’s correct, then how can CA push the idea that the bowlers didn’t know? It looks like they had decided who they wanted to blame from the very beginning, ran a shoddy investigation to serve the purpose and now they want to maintain the false narrative that the bowlers had no idea. That stinks of a cover-up,” Warner wrote in an Instagram post.

Earlier on Friday, Australian Test captain Pat Cummins held a fiery 68-minute press conference, calling Khawaja’s claims “complete and utter nonsense” and “100% wrong” regarding allegations that players knew about the use of sandpaper on the field. He also strongly pushed back against Khawaja’s race-based captaincy claim, saying it was a serious allegation that required evidence. He added that Khawaja had been “casual and flippant with people’s lives and reputations”.

While commentating during the first ODI between Australia and England on Friday, Warner backed Khawaja’s version of events as “100 per cent accurate” and accused Cummins of throwing Khawaja “under the bus”.