The wife of disgraced cricketer David Warner revealed Thursday she suffered a miscarriage in the aftermath of her husband’s part in a ball-tampering scandal that rocked the game.
Candice Warner said the couple lost the baby a week after his tearful press conference in Sydney in late March after he was sent home from Australia’s tour of South Africa and banned for a year.
She attributed the loss to stress and an arduous flight home, describing the couple’s devastation at realising she was miscarrying.
“I called Dave to the bathroom and told him I was bleeding. We knew I was miscarrying. We held one another and cried,” she told the Australian Women’s Weekly magazine.
“The miscarriage was a heartbreaking end to a horror tour.
“The ordeal from the public humiliations to the ball-tampering had taken its toll and, from that moment, we decided nothing will impact our lives like that again.”
The couple already have two children, Ivy Mae, 3, and Indi Rae, 2, and Warner said she discovered she was pregnant again in Cape Town.
“We were overwhelmed, knowing another little Warner was on the way,” she said. “I don’t think either of us realised how much we longed for this baby.”
Australia’s tour of South Africa had started badly, with Warner charged with bringing the game into disrepute during the first Test for an altercation with Quinton de Kock.
Warner claimed de Kock made a “vile and disgusting” remark about his wife.
“That attack during the first Test in Durban when Quinton called me names, I should’ve known it wasn’t going to end well,” said Candice Warner.
She said she was watching on TV with her two children when the ball-tampering incident flared up during the third Test and “I sat slumped on the bed and wondered if I could take any more.”
In the aftermath, her husband wanted to return to Australia with Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft, who were also involved in the scandal, but they were put on separate flights with the Warner family handed the longest route back.
“We got the longest and tough route. No one knew I was pregnant and Dave did everything to get me home safely, fearing any more strain could affect our unborn child,” she said, adding that she was in “a bad state”.
On arrival in Sydney, they were met with a media scrum, adding to the ordeal.
“We’d been assured it was a private exit and we’d managed to leave quietly from Johannesburg,” she told the magazine.
“I was completely gutted when I saw the media, especially after 23 hours flying, knowing the world had no idea I was carrying our third child.”
Her husband, banned from state and international cricket for his part in the plan to use sandpaper to tamper with the ball, will begin his road to redemption by playing club cricket with Sydney’s Randwick Petersham from September.
