Cricket Australia CEO disappointed Warner withdrew leadership appeal

By Sports Desk December 09, 2022

Cricket Australia (CA) chief executive Nick Hockley has expressed his disappointment that David Warner opted to withdraw his appeal against a lifetime leadership ban.

Warner was given a one-year ban from playing elite cricket and CA ruled he could never hold an Australia leadership role again for his part in the 2018 Newlands ball-tampering scandal.

The opening batter challenged that ruling, but this week revealed he had withdrawn his appeal as he has no interest in "a public lynching".

Hockley says an independent review panel, which decided a hearing would be made public, was necessary in order to make the process "fair and transparent".

The CA CEO said: "We're disappointed that he's chosen to withdraw his application.

"This is not the outcome that we wanted. The fact it has become such a public thing is entirely contrary to what we were hoping to achieve.

"He could have continued with the process and an application could have been made during the hearing to ask for accredited media not to participate [in parts]. He could have just said 'I am going to withdraw, but I am not going to make a public statement'.

"I did relay that I was concerned I didn't want him to prejudice any future application with public comments. But clearly David has felt the need to say some things.

"This was not about looking at the original events or original sanction, it was about reviewing behaviour since."

Hockley added: "There is a huge amount of public interest in this, clearly, and the commissioners felt that it was appropriate for there to be a level of transparency.

"I make no apology that we've engaged with the best people, that we have best in class governance and we run a proper, fair, independent process."

Warner's agent, James Erskine, stoked the fires by claiming that two unnamed senior executives encouraged Australia players to tamper with the ball 16 months before the fiasco in Cape Town.

Hockley told SEN in response to those accusations: "They were really unhelpful and, I think, unfounded comments. I think that's totally counter to the objective of the process and I think it's precisely what David was hoping would not happen when he applied for it to be done in private.

"Some of the comments that I think have added to this situation have clearly not been [Warner's] own, they've been via representatives. So I'm really keen to see how he's going and how he's feeling following his decision to withdraw."

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