David Warner, the seasoned opening batsman for the Australian cricket team, has said goodbye to an incredible 15 years of international cricket that were filled with controversies and tremendous accomplishments on Tuesday.
Warner’s journey came to an end relatively quietly as Afghanistan defeated Bangladesh in the ‘Super 8s’ phase of the T20 World Cup, eliminating the former champions.
Team Australia finished in third place in the ‘Super 8s’ Group 1 table with just two points from their lone victory against Bangladesh. It was Afghanistan that unexpectedly defeated them.
After making his Australia debut in a T20I match in January 2009, 37-year-old Warner’s final international appearance was a 24-run loss against India on June 24. He made six runs off of six balls in his last game before edging Arshdeep Singh to Suryakumar Yadav, who completed a low catch.
Warner has retired gradually, with his final Test match being in January against Pakistan and his final ODI match being the World Cup final win over India in November 2023. He has earlier stated that his international career will conclude with this T20 World Cup.
Warner finishes his career with 3,277 runs at an average of 33.43 and a strike rate of 142.47 from 110 matches, making him the greatest scorer in Australia and the ninth most prolific hitter in the world in the T20 format. Throughout his T20 career, he has hit 118 fifty-score runs.
Warner had a remarkable career spanning from 2011 to 2024. Warner scored 8,786 runs at a terrific average of 44.59 in the 112 Test matches he played. With 26 hundreds and 37 half-centuries during his Test career, he has demonstrated his consistency and ability for large-scale run scoring.
Warner’s record is similarly impressive in the 50-over format. In 161 ODI appearances, he has scored 6,932 runs at an average of 45.30 while playing for Australia. His 22 hundreds and 33 half-centuries over his ODI career prove his strength as a top-order batsman.
Warner’s accomplishments are evident, as he has scored nearly 19,000 runs in international cricket and 49 hundreds in all forms combined. But controversy has also plagued his career, most notably the sandpaper-gate incident that happened in 2018 at Newlands, Cape Town, during a Test match against South Africa. As Warner himself has said, “his name will forever be linked to the Sandpaper Gate scandal.”
Warner suffered greatly due to his role in the matter in which Cameron Bancroft was discovered tampering with the ball using sandpaper. He received the same one-year suspension from both domestic and international cricket as the then-skipper, Steven Smith. Warner’s career was severely impacted by the decision to permanently exclude him from any leadership position in Australian cricket.
“I think it’s going to be inevitable that when people talk about me in 20 or 30 years’ time, there will always be that sandpaper scandal,” he said last week at North Sound ahead of Australia’s ‘Super 8s’ clash against Bangladesh.
“But for me, if they’re real cricket tragics and they love cricket, (as well as) my closest supporters, they will always see me as that cricketer—someone who tried to change the game, someone who tried to follow in the footsteps of the openers before me and try and score runs at a great tempo and change Test cricket in a way,” he added.
Warner led Sunrisers Hyderabad to their first-ever Indian Premier League title victory in 2016 while playing in the T20 League.
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