David Warner has never before spoken on record about his clash with Joe Root (right) which occurred in the early hours of June 9, 2013, following England’s Champions Trophy win against Australia.
By Chris Stocks in Chelmsford/The Guardian
Two years after the most infamous punch in cricketing history, David Warner has finally lifted the lid on his run-in with England’s Joe Root in Birmingham’s Walkabout bar.
Warner has never before spoken on record about his clash with Root which occurred in the early hours of June 9, 2013, following England’s Champions Trophy win against Australia at Edgbaston. The incident saw the Australia opener punch Root, offended by the Englishman wearing an Australian wig on his chin, imitating, he thought, Hashim Amla, the South Africa batsman.
Warner has now given his account, confirming he thought Root’s placement of the wig was racially insensitive and claiming that England fast bowler Steven Finn was “asleep in the gutter” by the end of the night.
The timing of the allegations promises to ramp up the apparent ill-feeling between the two Ashes adversaries just five days before the series starts in Cardiff and is embarrassing for Root, now England’s vice-captain, and also Finn, who is in the squad for that first Test.
“We were in the bar in the hotel, a few of us, and we all decided to go next door and have a couple of drinks,” Warner told the Sydney Morning Herald. “We all went out and a lot of the people from the ICC were there as well, but it was more the fact that the bar was next to the hotel. It was convenient; it wasn’t a sought-out thing.”
The Australians were invited into a roped-off area at the Walkabout along with members of the New Zealand team and a group of England players including Root, Stuart Broad and Finn turned up.
“We had a place sectioned off for us and they decided to come in—it was probably one, one-thirty in the morning,” says Warner. “They were obviously not part of our group. It was more me giving marching orders in a way.”
Warner, who has been teetotal since Australia left for their tour of the Caribbean in May, says there were “little things that were going on throughout the night” that annoyed him before Root’s positioning of the green-and-gold wig tipped him over the edge.
“A mate of mine was actually wearing it on top of his head like a (Lasith) Malinga wig, that’s what it was,” he says. “He was wearing it on his head and (Root) decided to come in and take it off my mate’s head and start acting the way he did. When people are drunk that’s what they do but I thought it was a bit inappropriate the way he went about that stuff, so I went over and tried to take it off him.
“I just think in today’s society you shouldn’t be fooling around with that kind of stuff. And he probably didn’t mean anything by it at all but I just thought—actually I can’t say I thought—I probably let my aggression and alcohol take over there and probably made an excuse for me to go over there and actually take it off him.”
Dragged away from Root by his Australia teammate Clint McKay, the parties left, with Warner noting on his way out he saw Finn “asleep in the gutter”. Warner thought that was that. “I texted Joe the next morning and everything was fine,” he says.
What happened next saw Warner banished to the Australia A team’s tour of South Africa, Mickey Arthur sacked as coach and the installation of Darren Lehmann.
Neither Lehmann nor Warner, who came back into the fold for the third Test of that 2013 Ashes series at Old Trafford, have looked back since and the resurrection of Australian cricket sees them head into this summer’s series as strong favourites to win their first Test series in England since 2001.