Team frustrated by review handling: union

Australian Cricketers Association chief executive Todd Greenberg claims the Test team is frustrated by the handling of David Warner's leadership ban, hitting out at Cricket Australia for losing control of the process.

Warner's decision to abandon his review application to have his ban lifted, and the fury over an independent panel's desire for his appeal to be held in public, has hung over the Adelaide Test.

Greenberg claimed the Test opener had little choice but to withdraw his pitch, with the 35-year-old concerned for the wellbeing of both his family and the Australian team. 

He also indicated the union's belief that the situation could now not be salvaged, with any hope of the only-remaining sanction out of the 2018 ball-tampering saga being removed now gone.

Greenberg says he was at a loss to understand how the situation had reached this point, given both Cricket Australia and Warner had expected to process to be played out in private.

But he said besides Warner, the biggest losers were players and Australian cricket with Warner's teammates also frustrated by the situation.

"It would be a fair understatement for me to say we are unbelievably frustrated," Greenberg told SEN. 

"That is the overarching emotion I felt. We are very frustrated, not just for David and his family. 

"But also his teammates who I know are really annoyed about this process, that it has been allowed to drag into the Test summer."

Greenberg said any retracing of steps in the lead up to the Cape Town affair would not be helpful, after Warner's manager James Erskine sensationally claimed on Thursday players had been given permission to tamper with the ball from as early as 2016.

The ACA chief also believed there was no reason why the hearing should be held with media present, labelling the entire process convoluted after the union first made a pitch to have the ban lifted in February.

"The code of conduct amendments introduced by Cricket Australia were that the review would be conducted privately unless there was a very good reason for it not to be," Greenberg said. 

"There is nothing remarkable about that at all. It is how every code of conduct hearing has been conducted from the beginning. 

"So why the panel decided the issue needed to be a public hearing after both CA and Dave agreed the matter be held privately is beyond me and I think lacks a real level of commonsense."

Greenberg has personal experience in dealing with integrity matters, most notably rolling out the controversial no-fault stand-down policy during his time as boss of the NRL.

That rule, which was unsuccessfully challenged in court by the Rugby League Players Association, was created without an independent panel and still requires no outside organisation to decide sanctions.

The experienced administrator therefore questioned why CA had not dealt with the lifting of Warner's ban entirely in-house.

"I hoped, maybe naively, that the question around leadership would be decided by the governing body who originally took the leadership away," Greenberg said.

"But sadly, nine months on, with the benefit of hindsight, we may never have asked the question if we knew what the answer would look like."