‘Captain threw Uzzie under the bus’: David Warner slams Pat Cummins as he reiterates support for Usman Khawaja in Sandpapergate originally appeared on Cricket News. Add Cricket News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
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David Warner has taken aim at Australia’s Test captain, Pat Cummins, over the Sandpapergate scandal.
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The row follows explosive claims in Usman Khawaja’s autobiography about what the team knew.
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Warner says he can’t move on and hints at telling his own story.
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Civil war in Australian cricket! David Warner rips into Pat Cummins after skipper calls Usman Khawaja’s Sandpapergate claims ‘nonsense’
David Warner believes Pat Cummins threw Usman Khawaja under the bus, and the former Australia opener has now said so on live television while repeating that he stands firmly behind his old teammate.
Khawaja set the argument in motion this week with his autobiography, Sabr, in which he says that the entire Australian team knew about the use of sandpaper during the 2018 Test in Cape Town. The retired batter also argues that the group, which included Cummins, should have accepted responsibility for it.
Warner, who was suspended for twelve months over the scandal, has now backed that version of events. His support cuts directly against the public position of Cummins, the current Test captain, who has always denied knowing anything about sandpaper during that match.
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Eight years on, the disagreement between two of the men who played in that era shows how raw the subject remains.
Pat Cummins responds to Usman Khawaja’s Sandpapergate claims in 68-minute Sydney press conference
Cummins didn’t let the allegations pass quietly, and he spoke to the media in Sydney for an extraordinary 68 minutes. He wanted to separate what he accepts from what he considers false, and he made it clear that Khawaja’s wider claim had gone too far for him. He said:
“When he says we all knew, if by that he means we knew sandpaper was going out on the field, he’s 100% wrong.”
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He then repeated that his stance has not changed in all the years since, and he rejected the idea that he or anyone else had helped to plan the scheme. He added:
“I said that consistently for the last eight years. I did not know that was happening. He says that I and others were architects of a scheme to ball tamper with sandpaper. That’s complete and utter nonsense.”
Cummins and Khawaja played 56 Tests together before Khawaja retired from international cricket in January, which makes the break in their relationship even more striking.
David Warner on Pat Cummins: ‘I still stick by Uzzie’
Warner chose the Fox Cricket broadcast of Australia’s first ODI against England at Optus Stadium to give his reply. He began with a simple statement of loyalty to Khawaja and described the book as truthful, before turning his attention to how the captain had handled the matter. He said:
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“I still stick by Uzzie,” he said. “And what he’s written in that in that book. It is the truth and I really, really support him.
“I actually feel for him at the moment. I actually feel that the captain today actually threw Uzzie under the bus. And I’m very, very disappointed about that.”
Warner says he, Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft paid a ‘life punishment’ for Sandpapergate
Gilchrist then raised a point that Cummins had made earlier in the day, which was that the scandal had affected the personal lives of many people and their wider families. He asked Warner how that made him feel, given how widely it has been said that the three punished players had carried the burden for eight years.
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“Yeah, look, all all three of us have paid a a big price in this and, you know, I hadn’t spoken about it in eight years, but at the end of the day, we got to live with these consequences daily. And, you know, we’ve we’ve been served a life punishment,” Warner replied.
“So when other people talk about it’s been they’ve been affected by it, there’s no there’s no nothing worse for me, Steve, and Cameron who have to walk out there every single day and, you know, we we cop abuse. Yes, we accepted it. But, you know, at the end of the day, my wife and I as well paid the greatest price; we lost a baby during that time. And that’s why it really hurts me the most until the truth is accepted.”
The discussion then turned to whether the matter should be looked at again, with Gilchrist asking Warner whether he feels that a further investigation is needed to bring out what he calls the truth.
“Yeah, look, it’s been very difficult because the way that it was handled in the first place, it was hard for us to go back and actually, you know, give more evidence,” he said.
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“It was literally, as I said, it was I it felt like it was a botched, investigation. It was a quick one to get it over and done with. Some of the questions were quite, you know, challenging in the way that it was being planted on us. And then we had to move on and just accept responsibility for three of us, and we ultimately did.”
Former England captain, Michael Vaughan, another member of the panel, then asked him directly whether he had absolute proof that more people knew about the plan.
Warner didn’t offer any proof in his answer. Instead, he said that he and the others no longer have the chance to go back and speak again.
He added: “Well, the the thing for us, Vaughan, is that we don’t have that opportunity to to go there and and speak again. I told Greenberg, ‘Quash that,’ um, the other day. So I thought there’d probably going to be conversations, uh, behind the scenes, uh, probably after all this.”
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Warner says no teammate reached out in eight years as Khawaja and Bancroft remain upset
Gilchrist also asked whether Warner had been in touch with Khawaja or with Bancroft during this period. His reply was long, and it showed a deep sense of hurt about the silence from the rest of the dressing room.
Warner replied: “Yeah, I was speaking to both of them. They’re quite upset about this all as well, and I think the main part about this is in, in that eight years, not one of those people that were in that dressing room, besides those three spoken to us about that.”
Warner argued that nobody had picked up the phone or raised a question, even though he says that he and the others would have welcomed a conversation, and he mentioned that he has played golf with Cummins on a few occasions.
“I think that’s the mateship that we talk about, the honesty that you have with each other; there has been no contact or questions about it. And we’re all adults, and we’re open to conversation. We’re open to that, but I’ve played golf with Pat Cummins a couple of times,” he said.
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Warner went on to stress how much time he has spent around Cummins since 2018, including in the dressing room and on the field in successful tournaments. In his view, the subject never came up in all that time, and that is what makes the current situation feel strange to him.
He added: “I’ve been in the dressing room, you know, since and played and won some World Cups, and it’s just never been questioned or asked about it. So, yeah, look, at the end of the day, you know, Pat’s not going to grieve me. I’m not going to grieve him. He’s obviously spoken about what he thinks about Uzzie’s book, but I stand by Uzzie and his comments.”
More to follow…
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: Sports.yahoo.com
