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Opinion
Most of us can probably recall standing in front of our mum and and dad, in trouble and being scolded after doing something rather stupid in our youthful years.
No doubt we were all often caught out, embarrassingly at times, with our parents being a little too cluey and having a little too much nous for us to get away with what were dopey indiscretions that only the minds of children could even dream of getting away with.
After the dressing down, punishment and an insistence that the action should never be repeated, many of us were probably asked questions like, “Is there anything else we need to know?” or “What else do you need to tell us?”
Such questions were designed to give us the opportunity to clean the slate and start afresh, rather than be dragged over the coals in the future when the extra details were discovered.
Such is the case with the Australian cricket team, one caught cheating in South Africa at Newlands in March of 2018, when Cameron Bancroft was filmed using a hidden material on the ball, in an attempt to make it more ‘active’ for his bowlers.
Now, nearly five years later, the story seems old and one that should be well and truly dead and buried.
Captain Steve Smith took a reputational whack and a 12-month playing and leadership ban, Bancroft was punished as the soldier ordered to enact the crime and David Warner took the most significant hit of all: out of cricket for a calendar year and “not be considered for team leadership positions ever again”.
Sadly, the saga continues, based on the simple fact that recent events suggest nothing like the whole truth around the most shameful event in Australian cricket has ever been revealed.
Warner’s punishment came off the back of a perception that he was the instigator, the ‘genius’ behind the operation and that, under pressure to belong, Bancroft followed orders, with Smith weak in captaincy and not possessing the fortitude to call out something that was most likely to end in tears.
Yet now, with Warner’s decision to withdraw his request to have a career-long leadership ban overturned for fear of the effect it may have on his family, and his manager James Erskine’s explosive statements across the last 36 hours, it is obvious there is a whole lot more to the story than Cricket Australia and the playing squad themselves would like to have us know.
Erskine’s categorical statements that “the truth will come out” and that people would have to be blind to not realise that “there was far more than three people involved in this thing” raise an interesting question: why did his client not provide a full and accurate account of what took place at Newlands when he was granted the opportunity by Cricket Australia during its hastily held investigation in late March of 2018?
David Warner. (Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)
Moreover, if Erskine is such an advocate for the truth, why did his man not practice transparency throughout the entire saga? Warner and his wife Candice’s rather clumsy attempts to garner some sympathy earlier in the week seem to avoid the now ever-growing reality that the truth behind Sandpapergate is still yet to be fully revealed.
That filters out to Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft who, should Erskine’s claims prove correct, have also withheld information in regards to who organised, or at least harboured knowledge of the cheating undertaken by a team so desperate for victory, that a sense of fair play was simply thrown out the window.
Frankly, it appears that nobody told the complete truth and perhaps, as Tom Cruise once said, they simply could not handle it.
The claim that CA executives entered an Australian dressing room in Hobart some two years earlier and promoted such a lawless approach to cricket is simply astonishing and Erskine’s use of it as some sort of reason or justification for the actions of the players at Newlands is yet to be substantiated.
It seems likely that Warner has simply had enough and will now walk away from the Test arena as the petulant child he has so often become thanks to his own poor decisions. Rumours of a book that reveals the ‘truth’ behind all that played out do not seem too far-fetched.
However, no matter how more explosive or revealing any subsequent Sandpapergate details may be, it might be best for us all to remember that after cheating, David Warner’s manager has openly admitted that his client did not tell Cricket Australia ‘everything’ that he should have.
True remorse and sorrow would have seen him and others do so.