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Change Your Life! |
Warne admits "talking dirty" |
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News |
June 17, 2000
SYDNEY (AP) - Australian cricketer Shane Warne on Friday admitted "talking dirty" but denied harassing a British nurse after she reportedly spurned his advances in a nightclub.
The leg-spin bowler, Australia's most prolific test wicket-taker, said it was a mistake to leave messages on Donna Wright's answering machine but said media speculation of the incident was wildly inaccurate.
The Australian vice captain became involved in a tabloid sex scandal when the London Daily Mirror newspaper published a report last Saturday alleging he made continued and menacing phonecalls to Wright, 22, leaving explicit messages for her.
Wright claimed that Warne, who is serving a short-term contract with English county Hampshire during the Australian off-season, had approached her in a Leicester nightclub and pushed his hotel room key into her pocket.
She said she was "silly" for letting her friends hear subsequent phone messages because "word got out" and the Daily Mirror had "hounded" her for the tapes.
Wright was interviewed on Channel Nine program "A Current Affair," televised Thursday in Australia, where she denied being paid to expose Warne, who is a married father of two.
Warne, who steadfastly refused to comment earlier, appeared Friday on the same program.
"As an international sportsman who gets pestered a fair bit - I would never harass anybody," he said. "She was talking dirty to me ... and I reciprocated.
"The most disappointing thing is that she was laughing about it with her friends and now she's decided to come public with it and try to crucify me. I'm saying the truth and that's all I can do."
Warne said he was relaxing with teammates at a bar when Wright approached him.
"She came up to me and said "I hear you're famous" and asked me to sign her back," he said.
Warne said his wife, Simone, was "disappointed with what I did - talking dirty on the phone" but accepted he had not given Wright his key.
"The bottom line is we're like any married couple, we have our ups and downs. She has stood by me, she knows what happened, I know what happened and that's the end of the story as far as we're concerned.
"We've got two kids, we're getting on well, everything is fine on the home front."
Warne said having his private life splashed across the media was a sad fact of life for celebrity sportspeople.
But he said he hoped the scandal didn't interfere with his ambition of captaining Australia.
"As vice-captain of Australia, you have certain responsibilities you have to uphold," he said, adding that the issue was private and should not affect his career.
"If you look at my track record, people will say how can this bloke be vice-captain of Australia? Yes there has been some mistakes, but I think what I do on the field for Australia, I think I'm an important part of the team."
Australian Cricket Board chief executive Malcolm Speed ruled out disciplinary action after speaking with Warne, whose career has been plagued by scandals.
He ran into trouble on a tour of New Zealand earlier this year when he was accused of swearing at a teen-age boy who photographed him smoking during a rain delay during a match at Wellington.
Warne admitted in 1994 that he accepted money from a bookmaker to give information on weather and pitch conditions. He was fined U.S. dlrs 6,000 for the incident, along with teammate Mark Waugh. |