Photo: Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty Images
There he goes. Off the ground after a Test innings for the last time. Lost in exasperation at being more than halfway trapped, seemingly remembering at that moment why there was so much more applause than would normally greet an innings of 57. Pulling himself upright, spreading his arms towards the crowd, turning a full circle as if to take them all into an embrace. There it is afterwards, those beautiful moments after the battle on the ground where the players' children outnumber the players, little figures rolling on the grass or wrapping themselves in streamers, illuminated in rays of sunlight. David Warner chats on the fly with his little daughters while honoring every interview request, and is happy to keep talking: retired, but never retired.
A lot of people will be glad he's gone. That attitude is far more common than was reflected in the media celebration of his last Test series. Few Australian players have been so disliked domestically. But there was also a crowd eager for the chance to cheer him onto the pitch to get going, something they had four chances to do over the days and sessions of his final match. Much of this audience is forgiven for Warner, or at least they recognized that the moment was bigger and clearer than some vague and lingering personal animus.
Related: We will miss David Warner and his core villain energy. He made cricket feel epic | Barney Ronay
His story about lost and found baggy green caps felt like a fitting way to start the week. From the beginning, Warner has had a wild ability to become the story. Even before his national T20 debut in 2009 - a prodigy from nowhere, a real smoker, the first since 1877 to play for Australia without a first-class match to his name. Greg Chappell's youth policy may have had many shortcomings, but it did have this unique success. It's hard to imagine any other administrator having the audacity to push for this kid - and then two years later, with a first-class match total of 11, to push that kid further into the Test team.
The story continues
Before Warner had even produced the kind of crash-bang-wallop knock he was chosen to produce, which he did by teeing 180 against India in Perth, he had already proven his variety and worth by slamming his bat for 123 on a Hobart greentop carry in his second Test when the rest fell around him and New Zealand won by seven runs. He secured what should have been an Ashes victory in Durham in 2013, made hundreds in two of the three live Tests in the return series and set up a series win in South Africa with two tons in Cape Town the same summer. A special batting genius was writ large.
All the while it was accompanied by a distinct lack of brilliance: the verbal displays, the aggression on the pitch, the scuffle with the Walkabout, character flaws that some celebrated as much as others condemned, until it culminated in Cape Town 2018. Some blemishes may' It should not be glossed over, although moralizing about ball tampering is peculiar in a sport where it has always been a factor, an offense firmly on the list of misdemeanors rather than serious crimes. Those who still bring up sandpaper at every mention of Warner are clinging to something and have made their dislike of him part of their identity in a way they are unwilling to give up.
Far more than the tampering, Warner was responsible for persuading a gullible junior teammate to carry out the deed without the cleverness or courage to hide it. And again for denying knowledge while Cameron Bancroft was in front of the cameras. Warner has never made a candid public account, while his eulogies over the past week have often cited his bluntness and honesty. Concealment usually irritates more than the violation.
But you can't define a career this full in one portion. Not when it ends with 112 Tests played, 26 hundreds, 22 one-day tons while winning two World Cups, plus the T20 equivalent and a World Test Championship. The names with more international centuries make a short and illustrious roll call: Lara, Jayawardene, Amla, Kallis, Sangakkara, Ponting, Kohli, Tendulkar. Three players made more Test runs in opening: Cook, Gavaskar, G Smith. Opening in three international formats: Jayasuriya and Gayle.
All the while, he has played every IPL season since 2009, barring the season in which he was suspended, now third on that tournament's all-time list with 6,397. He has probably played more top-flight cricket since his debut than anyone in the world, barring perhaps India's Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli. The dedication it takes, both for physical and mental fitness, for thriving in all formats while living in hotels and being in the center of the spotlight is not something anyone else can fully understand.
For the man who was once a boy who ushered in the future, some old-fashioned Test cricket leaves it with him. The pioneer of the T20 era, the IPL emblem, is also the one who devoted everything he could to the old style, hardly missed Tests with injury, never missed for any reason other than two suspensions, and rather than quit for the T20 circuit after that second suspension, and returned with renewed determination that saw him through his torrid 2019 in England to score a Test Triple Century and win the Allan Border Medal for Australian Player of the Year.
Test commitment is easier for Australian players, when match fees are 20 grand a pop and the annual contract might even buy you a house in Sydney. But it was still remarkable that during this enormous career, nothing was more important to Warner than the opportunity to play the longest, hardest and most taxing format. Launching a nationwide search when his wide green was lost at the back of the bench shows once again how much this particular cricket mattered. He then made this explicit in his pension discussions.
"The pinnacle of Australian cricket aspires to have this wide green," he said in one. "I just want to give some advice to the young people there. Hold on to your dreams, keep believing. This is the ultimate cricket: Test match cricket. This is what you want to play for and what you want to strive for."
This was Warner with an eye on bigger things, just as he played the role of union shopmaster in the 2017 labor dispute as one of the country's most prominent players, standing up for female and domestic players that Cricket Australia wanted. to forego a revenue-sharing deal. It was one of his most admirable moments, something his opponents are unlikely to remember or acknowledge.
Ultimately, facts won't matter if people form their opinions based on vibrations or anecdotes. Those close to Warner or those who met his good side will remember good humor and generosity. Those who didn't will remember rudeness and a knack for spite. The point is that you can take all that into account - all the grounds for criticism, all the counterclaims - and still enjoy what Warner the cricketer and Warner the personality had to offer the spectators.
There was his unsettling nature, in his more salutary expressions: a remarkable ability to excite people, irritate opponents, feign sincerity, tease false stories at press conferences, such as confirming his retirement from one-day cricket in the same breath. claiming he would play the 2025 Champions Trophy. There is plenty to read from Usman Khawaja's comment that his mother's childhood nickname for Warner was 'devil' in Urdu.
Above all, he was the entertainer on the field, because that's what he was: the man who performed a backflip while backing a ball into the roof boards of the Chinnaswamy Stadium during a World Cup match two months ago, the opener who bombed, who child in the second tier of the 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 ever to do so, the switch-hitter, every now and then then a right-hander, the kamikaze streak between the wickets or in the outfield, the player who returned to England in 2023 despite a borderline sadistic public interest in his failure and instead helped set up Australia's two Ashes-sealing victories .
The sum is a picture full of chaos, clashing colors and strange figures, part Jackson Pollock, part Bayeux Tapestry, part LED drone show, and even if the effect of the whole thing gives you a migraine, there is no denying that there was artistry in the construction thereof. Nor is it important that, apart from a few marginal panels, their creation comes to an end. In the middle, a character remains entirely in white, without any claim to the angelic. For anyone who has followed cricket, he was 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 so, but for the rest of us, that was impossible. Thanks Dave. It was fun.