The ground rules were laid out with a firm hand before David Warner’s arrival.
Saturday’s press conference in Sydney would not descend into a circus. Questions were to be taken in an orderly fashion, one each, upon the raising of a hand.
Candice, Warner’s wife, was to be left alone as she watched on from the back. It had been a tough time for the couple, and respect ought be shown.
The rules, though, were only ever going to hold for so long.
The media were tense. This was the moment when Warner, one way or another, would reveal the nature of his reported masterminding of the Cape Town ball tampering saga.
Either that or his well-known belligerence would come to the fore after days of rumour and innuendo painting him as the scandal’s villain-in-chief.
But by the time his media minders called “last question”, the answers had failed to materialise.
“Dave, have you been made a scapegoat here?” the final questioner asked. “You’re holding back on some of your answers.”
It was then that the order broke down entirely. A flurry of questions were shouted at Warner’s departing back.
“Whose idea was it? Whose idea was it? Who took the sandpaper out there?”
“Why won’t you answer the question?”
Little more than 10 minutes earlier, Warner had arrived at the offices of Cricket New South Wales with his wife, both visibly chastened.
Warner looked like a man whose mental state had afforded him little sleep. The lines under his eyes were dug deep. His head was bowed.
The couple hugged before parting ways; Warner to face a dozen cameras snapping away, and Candice to sit among journalists at the back.
The emotions were raw and genuine.
Candice sobbed silently as she watched her husband stop and start, the words catching in his throat.
Warner prostrated himself before the public, begging forgiveness. There were six apologies and three sorries in his opening statement alone.
Yet, for all that, little new was offered. Who else was involved? Why did he do it? Has he tampered before? The questions were met with more tears and apologies but the answers never came.
Journalists who pressed Warner were cut short by a media minder. When Warner failed to answer when asked who else had been involved in the plot, one journalist pressed: “You haven’t answered the question, who else was involved?”
The intervention was quick: “Excuse me, one question.”
The questions may have been stopped in the press conference on Saturday. But for the public they will continue.
Perhaps sensing the unfulfilled expectations, Warner tweeted soon after, acknowledging there were “lots” of unanswered questions.
1/3 I know there are unanswered questions and lots of them. I completely understand. In time i will do my best to answer them all. But there is a formal CA process to follow.
— David Warner (@davidwarner31) March 31, 2018
But there was a formal process to follow, he explained. Much like the press conference, that process will descend into chaos for Cricket Australia if the answers don’t come.
