David Warner calls on Cricket Australia to probe claims India A players tampered with ball in practice match

David Warner has called on Cricket Australia to probe the ball-tampering issue that threatened to boil over during Australia A’s clash with India A last week.

A discussion between umpire Shawn Craig and the Indian team on Saturday, where players were told “when you scratch it, we change the ball” did not lead to any ball tampering charge.

And a dissent warning for Indian wicket-keeper Ishan Kishan was also seemingly swept under the carpet.

The matter was not followed up further by match officials and Cricket Australia later issued a statement saying the ball had been changed because of “deterioration”.

Now Warner, who was at the centre of Australia’s ball tampering scandal in South Africa in 2018 and banned for 12 months, is calling on them to investigate the “squashed” incident.

He believes the matter was put to bed so it didn’t distract from this summer’s Border-Gavaskar Trophy series.

“The ultimate decision is with CA, isn’t it?” Warner said at a press conference after his own leadership ban was lifted and he was named captain of the Sydney Thunder.

“But if the umpires deemed something happened, I am sure there will be a follow-up. I think the umpires or the match referee should be standing here answering questions.

“I think the match referee should be coming out and addressing his own staff which are the umpires.

“And if they’re sticking by the umpire’s decisions, you have to stand up for that. That’s obviously a statement CA have to release. I have not seen anything.”

The Thunder confirmed Warner would replace Chris Green as their captain for this Big Bash season, a week after his leadership ban was lifted.

“Quite clearly the last piece of that puzzle was that, but for me, now it’s about coming out and sharing my knowledge of the game,” he said.

“I think always forever, that was probably going to be on my CV as well. You don’t want to look back and go for a job interview and have ‘banned for life from a leadership perspective’ on your CV.

“I think two years ago, that was probably me done (with leadership). I thought I probably would revisit that, I didn’t even know if I was going to come back and play Big Bash. But I think deep down, in 2018, I learned a lot of things from then and one of those was giving back to the game.”