The former Australian opener, who received a one-year ban for his role in the infamous Sandpaper Gate incident in Cape Town, labelled the investigation “flawed and substandard” in comments made on Saturday.
In a post on Instagram, Warner said, “To my knowledge, Cricket Australia did not question Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc or Nathan Lyon during the 2018 investigation.”
He added, “If that is true, how can Cricket Australia maintain the position that the bowlers had no knowledge of the plan?”
“It appears they had decided from the outset who they wanted to blame, conducted a flawed investigation for that purpose, and continue to maintain the false narrative that the bowlers knew nothing. This all looks like an attempt to cover up the facts.”
The controversy surrounding the incident during the third Test in Cape Town resurfaced this week following the publication of Usman Khawaja’s autobiography.
In the book, Khawaja claimed that the entire team was aware of the plan to rub the ball with sandpaper to increase its swing.
Cricket Australia’s investigation had concluded that only then-captain Steve Smith, vice-captain David Warner and Cameron Bancroft knew about the plan. All three were subsequently sent home from South Africa in disgrace.
Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Nathan Lyon and Pat Cummins had publicly denied knowledge of the plan in a joint statement in 2021.
On Friday, current Test captain Pat Cummins rejected Khawaja’s latest claims during an extended press conference, describing them as “100 per cent wrong”.
Warner subsequently accused Cummins of putting his close friend Khawaja in a difficult position.
Starc also said earlier this week that “we had no knowledge of anything being used on the field”, while Hazlewood and Lyon have yet to comment on the latest developments.
Cricket Australia has ruled out reopening its investigation. In a statement issued on Saturday, the governing body said all players had been given an opportunity to present their accounts of the incident.
A Cricket Australia spokesperson said, “As we have previously made clear, all players were given the opportunity to provide their accounts at the time of the original investigation, and they have also had the opportunity to come forward with new evidence over the past eight years.”
The spokesperson added, “Since then, Cricket Australia has respected the right of every current and former player to share their own account of the events.”
