David Warner could tell all over ball tampering but is holding his tongue, for now

David Warner’s 12-month ban is over, his authority is shot but his power absolute. He could tell all and plunge cricket back in to disarray but, for now, is silent. ROBERT CRADDOCK assesses what his return means for Australia.

• Warner calls team-mates to seek forgiveness
• Sandpapergate villains: where are they now?
• Test greats ask: was ball-tampering a one off?

David Warner returns from Australia’s cricketing wilderness on Friday morning, with less authority than he has had in four years but more power than any stage in his career.

Strange but true.

Warner has been sacked for life as Australian vice-captain after the ball tampering affair in South Africa and will have no decisive say in team matters for the remainder of his career.

But he does have one thing up his sleeve that makes Australia tremble — the power to blow up the building.

David Warner and Steve Smith were all smiles when they met in grade cricket, but wounds are still raw. Pic: Getty images.

With Mark Taylor questioning the narrow nature of Australia’s ball tampering inquiry and Ian Healy saying the team had been doing it for some time, most Australians now accept the bleeding obvious — that serious ball-tampering had been happening before the Cape Town Test and more people knew about it than the three caught in the act: Warner, Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft.

But only Warner, cricket’s man who knows too much, has the full story as the year ban on he and Smith ends.

Warner could name names and send Australian cricket into disarray if he wanted to but he has decided to instead take a deep breath, bite his tongue and go the other way by phoning up team-mates and apologising for his role and asking for forgiveness.

Some, like Tim Paine and Usman Khawaja, wished him the best. Other calls were understood to be more tense.

Warner could sell his story and it would be a bestseller but he does not need the money or more broken friendships and he has been urged by his new manager James Erskine not to create unnecessary problems for himself.

Smith and Warner will rejoin a cricket nation confused and conflicted about their futures.

The duo’s bans may be over but this is merely the start of another chapter rather than the closing of a book, for there is no consensus among Australian fans about their feelings towards the fallen stars.

Look at the comments at the bottom of any website story which mentions them and you see an emotional rainbow — sympathy, compassion, scorn, anger, bewilderment and that gnawing frustration which comes when you crave for the full facts of a story but can’t get them.

Warner tearful press conference a year ago is the only time he has spoken publicly during his ban.

There is a strange, almost eerie vibe about their return.

Some fans — particularly those who felt their penalties were too harsh — are eagerly awaiting their return but, in the broader cricket community, they are not the prodigal sons being welcomed back with rapturous hugs.

More like a routine handshake and an inquisitive stare which somehow looks through the eyes and into the soul.

Warner and Smith caught separate planes home from South Africa and they caught separate planes to Dubai for their brief meeting the Australian side earlier this month.

Warner is more used to controversy than Smith and perhaps better able to recover from it.

It would be wrong to over-read the significance of the fact they declined to travel together, but it can be said they essentially fought their battles alone and never saw themselves as a team operating outside a team.

Sydneysiders who have watched Warner and Smith during their time away say Warner had more “bounce’’ during his year off, which surprised no-one.

Warner has spent his career bouncing off the walls in cricket’s tumble dryer of controversy which somehow seems to make him stronger.

Smith, less conditioned to life’s abrasive forces, felt the pain more acutely because he had further to fall, going from a behavioural cleanskin to the captain in charge when the ship hit the iceberg.

Cricket Australia directors were privately hoping the duo would get well away from the cricket bubble and grow as men during their year off.

Both did their bit for charity and their cricket clubs but did not stray too far away from what they knew.

Now they are returning full-time to what they know.

In some ways it may feel nothing has changed. The reality is nothing will ever be the same.

PODCAST: Ball-tampering anniversary special with Geoff Lemon, author of ‘Steve Smith’s Men’, an award-listed account of the Newlands scandal and what it means for Australian cricket.

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