'They were told to do it': David Warner's manager gives shocking details on Sandpaper-gate

A day after star Australian opening batsman David Warner withdrew his application to overturn the captaincy ban on him, his manager, James Erskine, has provided some startling revelations about the infamous 2018 ball-tampering scandal known as sandpaper gate.

During the scandal, then-captain Steve Smith, Warner and opener Cameron Bancroft were caught using sandpaper to tamper with the ball, following which all players were given lengthy punishments. Following this shocking incident, both Smith and Warner were banned for a year, while Bancroft was suspended for nine months. And that is not it, as Warner was given a lifetime captaincy ban while Smith was banned from captaincy for two years.

Team followed orders of Cricket Australia: David Warner's manager

In a conversation with Australian radio channel SEN, James Erskine warned that the truth will come out soon and fans will wonder why David Warner was made the scapegoat in this controversy. "When the truth comes out, everyone’s going to turn around and say 'well, why was David Warner picked upon?' Let me tell you. Someone will... there are lots of people. There are two cricketers who put their hands up and said ‘why don’t we all just tell the truth? They can’t fire all of us’. That’s what happened," said Erskine.

While elaborating on the incident, Erskine added, "Two senior executives were in the changing room in Hobart (in 2016) and basically were berating the team for losing against South Africa – and Warner said that we’ve got to reverse swing the ball and the only way we can reverse swing the ball is basically by tampering with it – and so they were told to do it."

A day before Erskine made these shocking revelations, Warner wrote a letter to Cricket Australia to withdraw his application to overturn the captaincy ban on him. The 36-year-old said that he was not willing to let his family go through any more trauma, having suffered a lot in the past five years.

"Regrettably, I have no practical alternation at this point in time but to withdraw my application. I am not prepared to subject my family or my teammates to further trauma and disruption by accepting a departure from the way in which my application should be dealt with pursuant to the Code of Conduct. Some things are more important than cricket," reads the conclusion of his letter given to Cricket Australia.