David Warner has called Cricket Australia’s 2018 ball-tampering probe “a shoddy investigation” and suggested a cover-up. In Instagram comments reported by AFP and published by Al Jazeera on November 14, 2026, he questioned whether investigators interviewed three of Australia’s bowlers. Source
A CA spokesperson said in a statement quoted by AFP and shared by journalist Daniel Cherny: “As we have stated previously, all players were given the opportunity to speak at the time of the initial investigation and have had the ability to come forward with new evidence in the eight years since.” Source Source
What Warner is alleging
Warner wrote on Instagram, according to AFP:
“As far as I am aware, CA did not interview Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc or Nathan Lyon in their 2018 investigation.”
“If that’s correct, then how can CA push the idea that the bowlers didn’t know?” Source
Warner accused CA of choosing whom to blame “from the very beginning” and running the investigation to back that choice. “That stinks of a cover-up,” he wrote. Source
Why the dispute is back
Usman Khawaja’s autobiography brought the dispute back. In the book, he alleges that the whole team knew about the plan to rough up the ball with sandpaper to make it swing during the 2018 Cape Town Test, AFP reports. Source
CA’s original investigation concluded that only then-captain Steve Smith, vice-captain Warner and Cameron Bancroft knew about the plan, according to AFP. Warner received a one-year ban for his part in the incident. Source
Starc, Hazlewood, Lyon and Pat Cummins publicly denied knowing about the plan in a joint statement in 2021, AFP reports. Cummins, now Australia’s Test captain, called Khawaja’s latest claims “100 percent wrong” at his November 13 news conference. Starc also said during the week that “we weren’t aware of things being taken on the field”. Source
AFP reports that CA has ruled out reopening the investigation. The inquiry may be staying closed, but the argument over how it was conducted plainly isn’t. Source
Comments