‘I want to leave a legacy’: How Warner learnt importance of playing his way

“I’m not playing Bazball,” insists David Warner. “I’m playing a brand of cricket that I’ve always wanted to play. I want to leave a legacy for the next person who comes along to do the same thing.”

Say what you want about the Australian opener — many have — but you can’t accuse him of being something he’s not, especially when it comes to eviscerating bowling attacks.

Warner may have mellowed off the field, but his batting remains a manifestation of his personality: aggressive, relentless, always in a hurry. In his pomp, particularly during the first half of his 111-Test career, he could take the game away from the opposition within a session.

He signalled his intentions in just his fifth Test when he scored 180 against India in Perth, reaching a hundred off 69 balls, the equal fourth-fastest Test century at the time.

“I always look back at my innings at the WACA,” Warner reflects. “We’d bowled them out for 160, we had 23 overs to go. The wicket was green and I thought, ‘Anything that’s in my half, I’m swinging at it’. And it came off. I scored a hundred in 20 overs. Ed Cowan was on 19 at the other end. If I can apply pressure on the opposition, by playing ‘tennis’ on my own terms, I will. If the ball’s in my court, I can do what I want with it.”

That’s how it often looked to the rest of us: like he was playing backyard cricket with a tennis racquet, dispatching balls onto the neighbours’ roof or down the street at will.

David Warner will play his final Test when he takes the field for Australia against Pakistan at the SCG.Credit: Steven Siewert

He hasn’t always batted as he wanted, though. One of his leanest series was the 2019 Ashes in England, when Stuart Broad removed him seven times in 10 innings. Warner finished that series with an average of 9.50, the worst by an opener to play 10 innings in a campaign.

It surprises when he reveals then coach Justin Langer and team mentor Steve Waugh tinkered with his approach during that series, which was drawn 2-2.

“I’ve always felt that I’ve played the way I’ve wanted to play — except 2019 in England,” he says. “Justin Langer and Steve Waugh were telling me that I had to be ‘coachable’. They were questioning where I was batting on the crease. I was being coachable, just listening and learning off these guys. I had success the last time I went there [in 2015], scoring 50 in every Test. This time [in 2023], I batted the way I wanted to.”

Warner made two critical calls early in his career that led him to Test cricket. The first was staying in NSW when his contemporaries, Phillip Hughes and Usman Khawaja, decided to leave.

Stuart Broad got the better of Warner seven times during the 2019 Ashes series in England.Credit: Getty

“A turning point for me was Hughesy going to Adelaide and Uzzy going to Brisbane,” he says. “I was having talks with three states as well about leaving. We all wanted to open the batting but at that time the guys weren’t happy with the coach, Anthony Stuart. The boys didn’t feel like they were evolving or learning.

“I bit the bullet and stayed. NSW is a strong state and a lot of Test players have come from NSW. If you bat strongly, why leave if two other guys are leaving? You have to back yourself. It was the best decision for me.”

The next critical moment came he was on holidays in the US in 2011. He flew from Las Vegas to New York and when the plane touched down he took a call from this then manager Peter Lovitt, who informed him he’d been picked for Australia A.

“Mate, I’ve booked a three-week holiday,” Warner told him. “I’m not leaving.”

David Warner with his wife Candice and their children at the SCG on Monday.Credit: Steven Siewert

Says Warner now: “At that stage, I just didn’t know what it was all about. I don’t need to do that, I’ll play later. I flew straight to Zimbabwe, scored a double-hundred and, from then on, it’s been awesome. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d play 111 Tests.”

If his critics had his way, he wouldn’t have played so many. Not since the Newlands ball-tampering incident in 2018, and not in the past two years when the runs haven’t come as easily as they once did.

He credits his resilience to his parents, Howard and Lorraine, who raised him in housing commission in Matraville in Sydney’s east, and his wife, Candice, who would drag him out of bed at 4am when she was competing as an ironwoman.

“That made no sense to me,” Warner laughs. “I was still out drinking with my mates because I could. The bond we’ve had ever since we started dating and now married with kids has been unbelievable. You become an unbreakable partnership in dealing with a lot of stuff. We’ve been knocked down in the media, but from us we hope people can gain some strength from what we’ve done with our family.”

Warner gets his dream send-off when the third Test against Pakistan starts at the SCG on Wednesday. Doubtless, he’s reached this Test because there hasn’t been a young batsman demanding selection ahead of him.

“The way I play, and my strike rate (of 70), says it all, I’m not going to be as consistent as everyone else who strikes at 50,” he says. “Towards the end of your career with your age, people will say there are youngsters coming through who deserve your spot. Without sounding rude, there are no younger players coming through. It’s Cameron Bancroft, who’s played 20 Tests. Marcus Harris has played 20. Matt Renshaw has had a taste. None of them are knocking down the door. These guys waiting in line, we know one of them will be the right person. Which of those three complements the guy at the other end?”

Warner first walked onto the SCG turf in June 1999 when Sydney Swans full-forward Tony Lockett broke the AFL’s goalscoring record and fans jumped the fence. He played a grade final here, too, but the famous ground took on special meaning following Hughes’ death in November 2014 when he was struck on the neck by a bouncer during a Sheffield Shield game while playing for South Australia.

Warner was playing for NSW and from the moment his friend went down he stayed by his side, holding his hand.

Just over a month later, in the first Test at the ground since Hughes’ death, he scored an emotional century, kissing the patch of turf where Hughes had fallen.

“I feel like he would’ve been there today with me,” Warner says softly. “He was such great talent. He had a tenacity and hunger for runs. When I bat, he’s always there. We know he’s watching.”

When Warner is batting, we all do.

Read part one here.

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