Former Australia vice-captain David Warner’s wife Candice said that she blames herself for her husband’s involvement in the ball-tampering scandal that has left Australian cricket in crisis. Candice Warner claimed that the Sonny Bill Williams fiasco, where she was taunted by South African fans for an alleged tryst in 2007 with the New Zealand rugby star, took it’s toll.
“I feel like it’s all my fault and it’s killing me — it’s absolutely killing me,” Candice Warner told.
The Test series was already fractious before the ball-tampering affair, with a row between David Warner and Quinton de Kock during the first Test which the Australian said was sparked when the South African is said to have insulted his wife.
Two senior Cricket South Africa officials were also photographed with three spectators wearing All Black rugby player Sonny Bill Williams face masks during the second Test in reference to a reported intimate encounter Candice Warner had with him in 2007 before she met Warner.
“Dave would come home from the game and see me in tears in the bedroom, and the girls just looking at their mum, it’s been heartbreaking,” she said.
“When we were in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, Dave would come home and, yes, I always put on a strong front and I turn out to the games.
“But seeing them wearing the masks, to have people staring and pointing and laughing at me, to have the signs, to have, you know, the songs made up about me, I would have to sit there and cop that.”
Smith and Warner was banned for one year from domestic and international cricket over the plot to change the condition of the ball while Bancroft was banned for nine months.
