Cricket Australia defends handling of Warner's leadership ban review appeal

Cricket Australia (CA) chief executive Nick Hockley has come out to defend his organization's way of handling veteran opener David Warner's appeal to review his lifetime leadership ban, saying that it was important for the independent review panel to make the process "fair and transperant".

Australian Cricketers Association (ACA) on Friday said that Warner had withdrawn his bid to have his lifetime leadership ban, imposed after 2018 ball-tampering scandal, overturned as the panel decided against Warner's wish of a private hearing. Following the withdrawal, Warner issued a statement saying that the review panel wanted a "public lynching" by putting the events of 2018 through a retrial.

 

Hockley instead said that the welfare of Warner and his family would have been a priority during the process and submissions could have been made to have certain parts of hearing in private. A reiteration came from him that the hearing would not be a re-run of events at Newlands back in 2018 despite what Warner said in his statement.

"We are disappointed that he has 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," ESPNCricinfo quoted Hockley as saying.

"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 did not 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 the original events or original sanction, it was about reviewing behaviour," Hockley concluded his point.

CA had expressed their support for Warner in a statement, agreeing that the hearing should be a private one. But the amendment in code of conduct policy left the exact terms of review to the panel.

"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 have engaged with the best people, that we have best-in-class governance and we run a proper, fair, independent process," Hockley signed off.