David Warner completely villainised for Sandpapergate scandal, says Aussie star's manager as he slams CA

On Wednesday (December 07), David Warner withdrew hisapplication for his captaincy banreview courtesy of a five-page explosive statement.The swashbuckling opener shared an explosive statement and heavily criticised the legal counsel stating that the comments made by them were very offensive and unhelpful. He revealed thatthe review panel acted opposite to Cricket Australia's (CA) findings and he, thus, withdrew his application as he doesn't want to make his family suffer once again.

After the unfortunate tur of events, Warner's manager has come out in the opener's defence and feels he has been completely villainised in the whole Sandpaper gate fiasco. As quoted by Fox News, Warner's managerJames Erskine said, "I think he’s fed up with the process, the trauma (from) that the original decision in South Africa, to his family and Candice (Warner’s wife), she lost a baby because of it. I think it’s odd, I don’t quite understand the process myselfof course, they (Cricket Australia) want this open court on the appeal. When you get banned for life with no appeal, I don’t think that can be legal, you can murder 25 people and get an appeal, and go have a second trial. The Prime Minister came out (at the time), (Malcolm) Turnbull came out and said this is a disgrace and whatever, I think he regrets those comments now, Cricket Australia had the whole process, the (Iain) Roy report was done in four days. You’d have to be a blind black Labrador, there was far more than three people involved in this thing, they all got a canning and David Warner was completely villainized.”

Add WION as a Preferred Source

Erskine added, “He has shut up, he protected Cricket Australia, he protected his fellow players on my advice, because at the end of the day no one wanted to hear any more of it and he’s got on playing cricket. Why Cricket Australia couldn’t have done a very sensible thing and said listen, it’s not legal that someone doesn’t have a right of appeal. It’s just absurd, why should he have to go through that, he has done everything he possibly could for Cricket Australia and for his team, and now he’s being treated like this… this is injustice at its greatest level."

The 36-year-old Warner has gone through a lot since the ball-tampering scandal in the Cape Town Test in early 2018. Cameron Bancroft, Steve Smith and Warner were the tainted trio involved in the scandal. While Smith also received a leadership ban post the entire saga, his ban was lifted and is now leading Australia in the second and final Test versus West Indies in Adelaide.