by There he goes. Off the ground after a test innings for the last time. Lost in the annoyance of being stuck lbw until more than halfway through, apparently remembering at that point why there was so much more applause than would normally greet an inning of 57. Standing up, extending his arms out to the crowd, turning a full circle as if to hug them all. There it is later, those lovely post-combat moments on the field where the players’ children outnumber the players, little figures rolling across the grass or wrapped in streamers, illuminated by the sun’s rays. David Warner chats with his young daughters as he fulfills each interview request, happy to keep talking: retired, but never retired.
A lot of people will be glad he’s gone. That attitude is much more prevalent than was represented in the media fest of their last test series. Few Australian players have aroused so much antipathy in their own country. But there was also a crowd eager for the chance to applaud him on the field to bat, something they had four opportunities to do over the days and sessions of his final game. Much of this audience forgives Warner, or at least recognized that the moment was bigger and more distinct than vague, lingering personal animosity.
Related: We will miss David Warner and his main villain energy. He made cricket feel epic | Barney Ronay
Their saga of lost and found baggy green caps seemed like a fitting way to start the week. From the beginning, Warner has had a savage ability to become the story. Even before his domestic T20 debut in 2009: a wunderkind from nowhere, a real smoker, the first since 1877 to play for Australia without a first-class match to his name. If Greg Chappell’s youth politics had many failures, he boasted about this singular success. It would be hard to imagine another manager having the audacity to push for this kid and, two years later, with that first-class match count at 11, push that kid even further into the Test team.
Before Warner had even produced the kind of knock he was chosen for, which he did by bowling 180 against India in Perth, he had already proven his range and worth, taking his bat on a Hobart greentop for 123 in his second. test as the rest fell around him and New Zealand won by seven runs. He achieved what should have been an Ashes victory in Durham in 2013, made hundreds in two of the three live Tests in the comeback series and recorded a series win in South Africa with the Twin Tons in Cape Town the same summer . He was singling out one batting genius in particular.
All along it was accompanied by a clear lack of genius: the words, the aggression on the field, the fight on the Walkabout, character flaws that some celebrated as much as others condemned, until it culminated in Cape Town 2018. Some stains may ‘ It should not be eliminated, although moralizing about ball tampering is peculiar in a sport that has always characterized it, an offense firmly on the list of misdemeanors rather than felonies. Those who still pull out sandpaper every time Warner is mentioned are holding on to something, having made their dislike of him part of their identities in a way they are unwilling to give up.
Much more than manipulation, Warner was guilty of convincing a gullible junior teammate to carry out the act without the intelligence or panache to conceal it. And again for denying knowledge while Cameron Bancroft looked at the cameras. Warner has still never offered a frank public account, while the praises sung of him last week often cited his candor and honesty. Concealment usually irritates more than offense.
But such a complete career cannot be defined in a single portion. Not when he finishes with 112 Tests played, 26 hundreds, 22 one-day tons and winning two World Cups, plus the T20 equivalent and a World Test Championship. The names with the most international centuries make a brief and illustrious roll call: Lara, Jayawardene, Amla, Kallis, Sangakkara, Ponting, Kohli, Tendulkar. Three players did more opening tests: Cook, Gavaskar, G Smith. Opening in three international formats: Jayasuriya and Gayle.
Meanwhile, he played every IPL season since 2009 except the one in which he was suspended, now third on that tournament’s all-time runs list with 6,397. He has probably played more first-class cricket than anyone else in the world since his debut, except perhaps India’s Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli. The dedication it takes to both physical and mental fitness to thrive in all formats while living in hotels and the spotlight is not something anyone else can fully understand.
For the man who was once a boy who heralded the future, something old-fashioned leaves Test cricket with him. The pioneer of the T20 era, the emblem of the IPL, is also the one who dedicated everything he could to the old style, barely missing Tests due to injury, never missing for any other reason except two suspensions, and instead of leaving the circuit T20 after the second ban, returning with renewed determination that saw him overcome his torrid 2019 in England to score a Test triple century and win the Allan Border Medal for Australia’s player of the year.
Devotion to Tests is easier for Australian players, when match fees are $20k a pop and the annual contract could even buy you a house in Sydney. But it was still notable that throughout this vast career, nothing mattered more to Warner than the opportunity to reproduce the longest, most difficult and most demanding format. Starting a nationwide search when his green baggy was lost on the back of the couch shows again how much this cricket, specifically, mattered. He continued to make it explicit in his interviews about his retirement.
“The top of Australian cricket aspires to have this baggy green,” he said in one. “I just want to give a little advice to young people. Keep your dreams, keep believing. This is the latest in cricket: Test cricket. This is what you want to play for and strive for.”
This was Warner with his sights set on bigger things, just as, as one of the country’s highest-profile players, he played as a union steward in the 2017 industrial dispute, defending the female and national players who Cricket Australia wanted. to exit a revenue sharing agreement. It was one of his most admirable moments, something that his detractors will hardly remember or recognize.
In the end, facts won’t matter when people form their views on vibes or anecdotes. Those close to Warner or those who knew the good side of him will remember his good humor and generosity. Those who didn’t will remember his rudeness and his talent for spite. The thing is, you can take all that into account – all the reasons for the criticism, all the counterclaims – and still enjoy the things that Warner the cricketer and Warner the personality offered to viewers.
There was his confrontational streak, in its healthiest manifestations: a remarkable ability to annoy people, annoy his opponents, feign sincerity, stir up false stories at press conferences, such as confirming his retirement from one-day cricket while stating who would play in the Champions Trophy in 2025. There is a lot to read into Usman Khawaja’s comment that the nickname his mother gave Warner in childhood was “devil” in Urdu.
Above all was the entertainer on the field, because that’s what he was: the man who two months ago was doing a backward somersault while throwing a ball backwards against the roof fences of Chinnaswamy Stadium during a National League game. World Cup, the opener who hit bombs, who annihilated a boy in the second over at Waca before consoling him with a pair of batting gloves, who smoked a century before lunch to start a Test match and was only the fifth in doing so, the switch-hitter, the occasional right-hander, the kamikaze streak between the wickets or in the outfield, the player who returned to England in 2023 despite an almost sadistic public interest in his failure and instead helped prepare the two victories that sealed Australia’s ashes.
The sum is an image full of chaos, clashing colors and strange figures, part Jackson Pollock, part Bayeux tapestry, part LED drone show, and although the effect of the whole gives you a migraine, there is no denying that there is It was art in its construction. Nor is it important that, apart from a few marginal panels, his creation is coming to an end. In the center remains a character dressed all in white, without any angelic claim. For anyone who has followed cricket, he was a part of our lives for 15 years. That means something, as does accepting that complexity exists and that binaries only work for computers. It’s easy for some people to hate Warner, and they’ll tell you that, but for the rest of us that was impossible. Thanks dave. It’s been fun.
