[imagesource: Instagram / @davidwarner31]

The second David Warner hangs up his boots, he’s going to start singing like a canary and throwing people under the bus.

Given that he’s 36, that day is coming soon and the groundwork is already being laid by his manager, James Erskine.

Warner, Cameron Bancroft, and Steve Smith are the three figures most closely associated with Sandpapergate, the disgraceful ball-tampering incident that took place at Newlands back in 2018.

Let’s revisit it briefly:

In case you missed it, this #SandpaperGate #BallTampering is utterly outrageous. It’s just not cricket. #BanBancroft pic.twitter.com/Z3zpIA32Jr

— Emma Sadleir Berkowitz (@EmmaSadleir) March 24, 2018

It’s been a long time since I watched that footage. The cheating was so brazen that it’s almost laughable.

Speaking this week, Erskine said the Australian test cricket team “were given the go-ahead” to tamper with the ball as far back as the test defeat to the Proteas in Hobart in 2016. Here’s Cricinfo:

“Two senior executives were in the changing room in Hobart, and basically were berating the team for losing against South Africa,” Erskine told SEN radio. “And Warner said we’ve got to reverse swing the ball, and the only way we can reverse swing the ball is basically by tampering with it. So they were told to do it.”

Erskine did not specify who exactly “told” them to tamper with the ball, and did not name the executives either who were present after the loss.

There it is.

They were caught in 2018 thanks to SuperSport’s ace camera team, but the cheating goes back years and the orders came from the top.

Erskine went on to say that his client, Smith, and Bancroft were unfairly punished and ominously added that “the truth will come out”:

“You’d have to be a blind black Labrador to not realise there was far more than three people involved in this thing. They all got a canning, and David Warner was completely villainised,” he said.

“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.”

So we are supposed to feel sorry for a guy who cheated because the rest of his team was cheating as well? No thanks, James.

Warner’s manager went on to say that “tampering with balls is a joke, but it has gone on for centuries. Everybody has been fiddling around with balls.”

The rest of the cricketing world isn’t ramming sandpaper down their rods.

On Instagram, Warner has been posting shite like this:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by David Warner (@davidwarner31)

This has confirmed my suspicions that he’s the kind of man who has a ‘live, laugh, love’ sign in his living room.

Erskine’s version of events has been challenged, according to The Sydney Morning Herald:

…three people who had been in the Hobart dressing-rooms and who spoke to the Herald and The Age on the condition of anonymity disputed Erskine’s versions of events, saying the players had not been encouraged to tamper with the ball.

Somebody’s lying.

I eagerly await Warner retiring and going all-in on his former teammates. Perhaps he could pull a Ronaldo and do an interview with Piers Morgan. Birds of a feather and all that…

David, you can have the final word:

Yeah… about that, Dave. #SAvAUS pic.twitter.com/DrCd8ASkN3

— The Cricketer (@TheCricketerMag) March 25, 2018

[sources:cricinfo&smh]