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Cricket Australia (CA) chief executive Nick Hockley has rejected claims his organisation should not have handed over control of the David Warner leadership review.
- CA boss Nick Hockley is "disappointed" that Warner chose to withdraw his application to have his leadership ban lifted
- He says that James Erskine's ball-tampering claim is "unhelpful" and "unfounded"
- Erskine alleges CA gave players approval to tamper with the ball
Hockley has also distanced CA from an allegation players were given permission to tamper with the ball more than a year before the 2018 Cape Town scandal.
The CA boss has come under fire after Warner's decision to withdraw his application to have his leadership ban lifted, with questions asked about how the governing body lost control of the process.
Among the concerns is that CA supported Warner's plea to have the hearing held in private, only for an independent panel to knock back the request.
On Friday, Australian Cricketers' Association chief executive Todd Greenberg said players were frustrated over the situation and the fact that the review on Warner's ban had lingered into the Test summer.
Hockley said he was confident his relationship with players could survive amid the furore of the last-remaining sanction of the Cape Town ball-tampering scandal.
"I think I have developed a really strong relationship with David over my entire time in the role, and a strong relationship with other players," he said.
"Ultimately, that is for them to describe how they feel about that. But we sought to communicate very regularly, be open, transparent, be fair.
"I am disappointed David has chosen to withdraw. This is not the outcome we wanted."
Hockley defended the way in which CA had handled the Warner affair.
"People can have their own opinions. The alternative to putting in place a proper process is to just make reactive decisions," Hockley said.
"That is not appropriate around matters of integrity.
"I make no apology for the fact we have engaged with the best people we have got in governance and we ran a proper, fair, independent process."
Hockley was speaking to the media a day after Warner's manager, James Erskine, alleged unnamed CA officials gave players approval to use ball-tampering methods after Australia was convincingly defeated by South Africa in Hobart in late 2016.
He said that Erskine's comments were "unhelpful" and "unfounded".
"An investigation was done at the time," Hockley told SEN radio.
"I think it has been said, repeatedly, [that] if there is new information to be brought forward — as with any matter of integrity — there are those avenues to bring forward information at any stage."
AAP/ABC