david warner

David Warner’s extraordinary batting feats in all three formats for Australia will forever be overshadowed by his role as the architect of the Newlands ball-tampering scandal in 2018 and his place as a central figure in Australian cricket’s ensuing cultural crisis.

Warner was charged as the man who instructed team-mate Cameron Bancroft to use sandpaper on the ball in the infamous Cape Town Test. Although he was not charged by the ICC he was banned from international and Australian domestic cricket by Cricket Australia for 12 months. He was stripped of the vice-captaincy and banned from leadership roles for life.

However, he returned for the 2019 World Cup and enjoyed a prolific tournament before suffering a record-breakingly poor Ashes were he made just 95 runs in 10 innings. The bounce back was emphatic as he scored an unbeaten 335 against Pakistan in Adelaide – the second highest Test score by an Australian – during a home summer which was crowned with the Allan Border Medal

Prior to his ban, Warner had established himself as one of the best all-format openers in the world. In 2015 his seniority was recognised when he was named vice-captain to Steven Smith in the Test and ODI sides and he led the ODI side and T20 sides with great success when Smith was rested. It was quite a turnaround for the man who two years earlier had been suspended by Cricket Australia for punching England’s Joe Root in a bar-room altercation in Birmingham, and had also been warned over a Twitter spat with a pair of journalists. It also completed a remarkable rise for a man who burst onto the international scene in 2008-09 as a T20 specialist; he was the first man since 1877 to debut for Australia before playing first-class cricket. His breathtaking 89 from 43 balls on debut against South Africa told the world of his talent, but few at the time expected him to become a key Test player as well.

His debut in the baggy green came, appropriately, in Test match No. 2020, against New Zealand at the Gabba in 2011, and in his second match he achieved what Justin Langer and Matthew Hayden never did – he carried his bat through a Test innings. His unbeaten 123 in Hobart could not prevent a historic New Zealand win, but his patience in challenging conditions showed a different side to his battership. Later in the same summer he made a very different kind of hundred, a 69-ball ton against India at the WACA. From his debut in late 2011, he was far and away the best performed Test opener in the world over the seven-year span prior to his ban.

Away from international cricket Warner has had a prolific franchise T20 career, especially in the IPL, and in 2021 became just the fourth batter to pass 10,000 runs in the format.
ESPNcricinfo staff