David Warner walks off field in protest to ‘sledging incident’ in club game
David Warner walked off the field in protest today after allegedly being on the receiving end of personal sledges from the opposition in Australian grade cricket.
Warner, who is currently in the middle of a 12-month ban from international and state cricket, was playing for Randwick-Peterson against Western Suburbs.
Warner, batting on his 32nd birthday, was not out on 35 when he walked off the pitch. Responding to the incident, Cricket Australia commented saying that they understood the opposition player involved was Jason Hughes, the brother of former Australian international Phillip Hughes who died in 2014.
Weirdness in Sydney Grade cricket. Dave warner, on 35, just walked off the field in the middle of the over. Told the umpire “I’m removing myself from the game”. Apparently it was because of a sledge. He walked off, then came back out to bat 2 mins later. #Cricket pic.twitter.com/jX0lihgLxU
— Brendan Bradford (@1bbradfo) October 27, 2018
They did not give details of the incident, only saying that it had become “personal” and “nasty”.
Warner briefly left the field and whilst the laws of the game state that Western Suburbs had no obligation to allow him to return, they did. Warner went on to score 157, his red-ball century since he was sacked as Australia’s vice-captain.
Neither player has commented on the incident, while media outlets have reported that Hughes called Warner a “disgrace”, although apparently not in relation to the ball-tampering scandal that resulted in his temporary exclusion from the international game.
The incident comes just two days before the findings of Cricket Australia’s review into the culture of cricket in Australia.
Warner has a been involved in a long list of on-field controversies. In 2015 he told the Indian batsman Rohit Sharma to “speak English” in a dispute, whilst he has admitted that his sledging went too far during the 2013/14 Ashes series. Speaking in 2015, former New Zealand captain Martin Crowe called him “the most juvenile cricketer” he had ever seen on a cricket field.
