"It was just like you were out there with Gilly (Adam Gilchrist) when Gilly's in one of those moods," Australian men's team's most successful captain Ricky Ponting remembers the debut of a 23-year-old Aussie star, who just tore apart Dale Steyn and South Africa. David Warner came into the International side even before making his first-class debut and straightaway dropped an impression that still reverberates in the minds of the fans. Warner, who now retires from ODIs along with Tests, has had an illustrious career to celebrate.
David Warner made his first impression with a spectacular International debut with a knock of 89 from 43 balls against South Africa in a T20I match on 11th January 2009. He smoked a 19-ball fifty and deposited Dale Steyn for consecutive sixes. Warner's limited-overs career is one of the most successful ones for Australia and there is no doubt that he is one of the best opening batters too.
Warner's start-stop beginning in ODIs
While David Warner made his mark in T20Is on his first attempt, it took him only one more game to show his glimpses in the 50-over format. Warner returned with 5 against his name on his ODI debut on January 18, 2009, but scored 69 off 60 balls in the next one. He was not a regular part of the Australian Playing XI for three years but when he got the backing, the Southpaw had a period where he was sort of unbeatable.
After not finding a place in the 2011 World Cup squad, Warner was given a long run in the ODI format in 2012, wherein he got 25 matches and scored 840 runs with 2 centuries. The Sydney-born cricketer then had a tough time when he was suspended by Cricket Australia for one month for his altercation with Joe Root during the Champions Trophy. But his dream time was yet to follow. Among the 6932 runs in ODIs, his best years came from 2015 to 2017 apart from two spectacular World Cups.
Warner's heydays in ODIs
But his best days in the 50-over format were yet to follow. As the year turned 2015, it looked like Warner had got a wand with magic of his own which saw almost every other player on the planet lagging behind. From 2015 to 2017, the Southpaw smoked 2731 runs. Among all the players to play in that period, only Virat Kohli had more runs than Warner as he made 2822 in that period. Only six players scored more than 2500 runs in these three years but none of them had a better strike rate than that of the Australian Southpaw, who scored his runs at 105.93, way more than Kohli and the rest.
Among openers, there was no one with more runs than the Aussie star. Out of his 2731 runs, Warner made 2710 while opening the innings, more than the second-placed Rohit Sharma's 2672. Additionally, his strike rate of 105.32 was more than any opener with over 1000 runs during this period.
Warner's two magical World Cups
It was not that he was scoring runs in only bilaterals. The opening batter had two World Cups to remember. He is the first and only from his country and third overall to score over 500 runs in two ODI World Cups. Warner had a terrific 2019 World Cup, where he was the second-highest run-scorer with 647 runs, just one less than Rohit Sharma. He then carried himself in the 2023 victorious World Cup where he made 535 runs and was the sixth highest-run getter and highest from Australia in the tournament.
While Warner has scored a fifty in the ICC knockout matches, he helped his team in a couple of good starts like in the 2023 World Cup semifinal and in the 2015 World Cup final.
When he was at his best, he came close to breaking Sachin Tendulkar's world record for most centuries in a calendar year. He struck 7 tons in 2016 and was only 2 short of Tendulkar's feat of 9 centuries in 1998. Warner's time might be up but he is leaving behind a career very few could have achieved
