‘I felt like a criminal’: David Warner’s wife Candice recalls incident when family reached Sydney after Sandpaper Gate

Australian cricketer David Warner’s wife Candice Warner has shared her ordeal surrounding infamous ball tampering scandal during Australia tour of South Africa in 2018. Candice said she ‘felt like a criminal’ and she believed it was ‘all my fault’.
Describing the family’s return from the South Africa tour to find huge crowds waiting at Sydney Airport, Candice wrote in the extract, published in News Corp Sunday newspapers, “There were policemen around us, and also ill-will. I felt like a criminal, returning for justice to be served.”
“Dave stopped and spoke briefly to the cameras. He was hurting. I could hear it in his voice, and that hurt me deeply. There was nothing to do but put our heads down and keep going. I’d learned that,” she added.
The incident made Warner stood down as Australian vice-captain and was suspended for 12 months following his involvement in a ball-tampering incident which captain Steve Smith and opening batsman Cameron Bancroft were also suspended for 12 months and 9 months respectively.
The 2007 incident when she was photographed in a hotel bathroom with Sonny Bill Williams was fanned back to life in 2018, when South Africans tormented the Warners, on-field and off, with vile references to it. Worse was to come as Warner believed that the trolling somehow led to the ball-tampering. “I felt, deep down, that it was all my fault.”
Recalling the pain and lewd comments she faced during the media trial, Candice said in her Stellar (magezine) interview,”At the core of that was a young woman who didn’t do anything wrong … The only thing I did wrong was go into a place I shouldn’t have been.”
Looking back, she is angry that she was convinced to make a public apology in the days after, saying: “It blows my mind now that that’s the way we all thought was the best way to approach that situation. Now it infuriates me. It angers me.”