New cricket star's battler past

SOON, David Warner hopes to repay a debt. The rising star of Australian cricket lives in a Housing Commission estate.

ONE day soon, David Warner hopes to repay an enormous debt. The rising star of Australian cricket lives with his parents, Howard and Lorraine, in a Housing Commission estate in the Sydney suburb of Matraville.

He winces when he thinks of the many thousands they spent on bats, balls, uniforms and camps for him and his older brother Steve through years of club and grade cricket.

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The Warners never complained. Cricket was, as Lorraine Warner says, a "game to get them out of the estate''.

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It worked. Last week, 22-year-old David Warner astounded the nation with his Twenty20 debut.

Now poised to enter the one-day and Test teams, he will soon fly out for the Indian Professional League.

Along the way, Warner will fulfil his real dream: buying his parents their own home.

"I want to repay them - I have to. If I'm fortunate enough to be able to buy them a house, I'll buy them a house,'' he told The Sunday Telegraph.

"Cricket is expensive. Back then, they were paying $400 for a decent bat. As a kid, you go to the store and pick a bat: `I want this one, I want this one.'

"My parents never complained. Whatever I picked, they let me have. Now I want to give something back to them.''

On the field last week, Warner thought of his close friend Mark Keighery, the fashion designer who died of bowel cancer last year.

"He always said he wanted to see my first game, and it's so sad he didn't make it,'' said Warner, who coached Keighery's children.

Howard and Lorraine Warner watched David's Twenty20 performances on television, phoning him in tears after each game to tell him how proud they were.

Lorraine, an aged-care nurse, couldn't take time off work to fly to the games, so David's girlfriend Sarah Armitage, a club water-polo player and hospitality worker, attended the matches with Steve Warner.

"Mum is going to come to a game soon,'' Warner said.

"She gets so nervous she can barely stand watching me play club cricket, let alone for Australia.

They keep saying to me: `That's enough, that's enough. You've done us so proud already, no matter what happens from here on, we're proud of you'.''

In 2007, Warner was expelled from the Cricket Academy - his crime was a seriously messy room.
Warner puts that down to "immaturity''.

"It woke me up; NSW Cricket gave me one last chance, and I've never looked back.''