Leave David Warner and his family alone

Over the past week or so, we’ve been told Australia went into the post-lunch session on Day 3 of the third Test against South Africa with a premeditated plan to alter the condition of the ball.

We’ve been told three individuals from the team – Steve Smith, David Warner, and Cameron Bancroft – created the plan between themselves, with Warner allegedly being the mastermind to the plan.

In Smith’s case, he has fronted an uncomfortable press conference. Only the hardest of heart will say it didn’t change their minds towards him. Its demonstrated at least an overwhelming remorse for what he did and the public’s response towards him has been of forgiveness, a willingness that is terrific to see.

I’m still a little cynical concerning the press conference itself. The timing of it and how emotional the speech made Smith – it seemed designed to create sympathy for him. A media professional will have known that, but that’s not why I’m penning this particular piece.

You see, I’ve heard exactly four sentences from the supposed mastermind of the plan to cheat, and those sentences revealed to me as much heartbreak as Smith’s longer press conference did. As much shock and as much hurt.

I watched, as Warner, his wife and his children walked past a cavalcade of vultures, snapping pictures and questions, deliberately ignorant and petty of the harm they did.

I watched, as he unwillingly fronted the cameras, unable to look at them, as he said words to the effect of needing time to formulate a response. His voice broke in places, his gaze was glossy, unseeing. I think it’s time we said something that, until now, has been more or less unsaid to the media.

Leave David Warner alone.

(Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

Conjecture all you like. Write opinion pieces about the events of Cape Town all you like.

But don’t follow him around with a camera, don’t chase his wife or his children, don’t hound his life or his family. Write whatever you like, but grant him his privacy.

There will be those of you that disagree. You think publicly shaming him for what he did is not enough, that life bans should have been enacted. To that, I have several things to say.

Number one – He wasn’t the captain.

Smith had the job, the stature, and the power to say no. You cannot act against strong leadership. We have forgiven him – or at least, some have – for being weak. Why should we damn Warner for his strength? After all, strength is something we applaud at all other times.

Number two – Darren Lehmann.

In the beginnings of Smith’s career as captain of this country, Mitchell Starc bowled a ball at a batsman, to have it driven back at him, where he promptly picked it up and threw it back at him, without any chance at running him out, purely to intimidate or hurt.

Smith spoke out against it that evening. “We don’t play cricket that way,” he said.

Between now and then, something changed.

That something is Darren Lehmann.

Lehmann turned Smith into a very different captain. He turned Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins into poor man’s versions of Mitchel Johnson in his modification of their lengths, but the worst thing he did was to Warner.

Warner has become a relentless sledger, a man who had to win and whether that’s the influence of Lehmann or not, it’ undeniable. You hear stories about Lehmann as a coach. Those stories entail that he’s a great cricket mind who played hard, wanting victory above all else.

(Photo by Michael Dodge/Getty Images)

Number three – Warner is straightforward.

Warner is as straight as the bats he uses. Not simple, not stupid, just unable to see the use in subtlety or complexity.

Not for him to see the bad in what he did before he did it, just the straightest point between two lines.

Unable to see how this series twisted him into the events of Cape Town; the sideshow of De Kock’s taunts followed up by the crowd in South Africa’s shameful masks. We didn’t play our cricket that way until we did, but nothing happens in isolation.

Australia’s plans to antagonise Rabada were well-publicised pre-series, courtesy of a general lack of subtlety from Australia. South Africa’s plans to antagonise Warner were far more pointed, far more effective. Rabada needs no antagonism and nor does Warner. Both simply react.

This is as much a reaction as anything else, by a player pushed beyond his capacity to take it. Does what he did shame us and embarrass us? Certainly, it does, and I may never cease to be angry at him for what he did.

But his ball tampering does not render him deserving of media camped outside his home, by his lawyer’s offices or following him and his wife around.

The media stoked the flames of this story. They kept the antagonism fresh in everyone’s minds. They reported each jibe, each parry and each riposte. They, with the assistance of Fanie de Villiers, discovered the ball tampering, and they exposed it. Now, they smell death, and they’re waiting for the dying to fall even further.

They know he’ll react. He’s done it already.

Some will say that he’s deserved it. Has his family? His kids? His parents? Do they deserve to be hounded by a relentless swarm of photographers? Do they deserve to watch husband and father relentlessly whittled down into an angry shell of who he is? Do they deserve that?

Leave him alone. Leave his family alone. Let them decide how to deal with this on their own, with the assistance they choose. If they decide to step back into public sight, then deal with them like you do all celebrities.

Until then, leave them be.