David Warner's Test career in pictures

Dec 29, 2023

David Warner was a singular beast on debut - the first Australian in 132 years to make it to the national side without playing a first-class game. He debuted in 2009 as a T20 slugger, but found a spot in the Test side as an opener in 2011, as Australia looked to plug the voids left by Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer.•Getty Images

Three Tests later, he starred in an innings-and-37-run destruction of India, belting 180 in 159 balls. Playing opposite him was his one-time idol he'd styled himself after - Virender Sehwag. Warner recalls Sehwag telling him at the IPL, "You'll be a better Test player than you are a T20 player." "Even I thought that was going a bit far," Warner had then said.•Getty Images

Warner hit the purplest patch between 2014 and 2015, racking up 1000-plus runs both calendar years. In South Africa in March 2014, Warner flayed Dale Steyn, Vernon Philander, Morne Morkel and Kyle Abbott to clobber 135 in the first innings, and 145 in the second, to give Australia a 245-run win. •Getty Images

His credentials as opening batter extraordinaire had been well established by 2017 but he drove the point home in the third Test against Pakistan in Sydney with his 18th hundred that came in less than two hours after the match began, inside the first session. He became only the fifth batter to make a century in the opening session of a Test.•Getty Images

Warner's return to the longest format was the trial by fire of the 2019 Ashes. England fans weren't about to go easy on him, and he gave them plenty of grist for the mill with a poor run of scores - 95 runs, three ducks and a high score of 61 in ten innings.•Mike Egerton/PA Photos/Getty Images

In June 2023, Warner announced his intention to retire after Australia's Test against Pakistan in January 2024, at the SCG, his home ground. The announcement polarised the cricketing fraternity, some finding it deeply presumptuous of the batter to include himself in the squad before it had been announced, yet others believing it was the farewell he deserved. Warner's response? A 164 against Pakistan in the first Test of his final series. •Getty Images

His very first century came in only his second Test - his 123 not out anchored a crumbling lineup in a game that New Zealand eventually won by seven runs, their first Test victory in Australia since 1985. But Warner carrying his bat was the first glimpse of the Test batter he to become - aggressive but patient, composed but attacking. •Getty Images

Warner hit a lean patch in 2012-13, scoring a solitary hundred in 32 innings. The Homeworkgate tour of India in 2013 and the subsequent Ashes drubbing marked a particularly low point for Warner, who rang up seven single-digit scores in 14 innings. •BCCI

In November 2014, Warner was on the field at the SCG when his friend and one-time opening partner Phil Hughes was fatally struck in the neck by a bouncer. A few weeks later, in the first Test since Hughes' death, a still grieving Warner played one of his finest innings, scoring 145 and 102 against India in Adelaide, his second twin centuries of the year. •Getty Images

Since his debut in December 2011 till the end of March 2018, no other opener had made as many runs as Warner or at as furious a strike rate. Warner's 6324 runs had come at a scarcely believable rate of almost 75 - the next best opener was Alastair Cook whose 6111 runs had come at a relatively more sedate 45.14. There was no doubt that Warner was then the best Test opener in the world. All of that was about to change.•AFP

But he bounced back later in the year with his best ever Test score - against Pakistan at Adelaide Warner went past Mark Taylor and Don Bradman's 334 to record the second-highest score by an Australian in Tests, his 335 not out coming behind only Matthew Hayden's 380 against Zimbabwe.•AFP

After beginnings as a T20 heavyweight, Warner will finish his career as Australia's most prolific opening batter, and the fourth most prolific Test opener ever.•Getty Images

Just before the Ashes, after a Champions Trophy game in which England had got the better of Australia, Warner was involved in the first of his famous stoushes, when he punched Joe Root at the Walkabout Bar in Birmingham, after taking offence to Root wearing a green and gold wig for a beard. Warner copped a suspension that took him out of action for the rest of the Champions Trophy and the first two Tests of the Ashes.•Getty Images

Warner's first double hundred came in a high-scoring draw against New Zealand at the WACA. His first-inning 253 wasn't even the highest individual score of the Test though - that went to Ross Taylor's 290. •Getty Images

In the midst of a deeply abrasive series in South Africa, David Warner was involved with an altercation with South Africa wicketkeeper Quinton de Kock during the first Test. By the third Test, the animosity and Australia's desperation to win culminated in the Newlands ball-tampering affair and Sandpapergate. Warner was stood down from vice-captaincy and handed a one-year ban, along with a life ban on a leadership position in Australian cricket. •Getty Images

By the time Warner's 100th Test rolled around chatter had already begun about putting him to pasture. He had just one hundred since his triple in 2019, and was barely scraping past 500 runs in the year by the end of 2022. But in typical Warner fashion he silenced his critics by bringing up his 25th century, then turning it into a double, in a win against South Africa.•Getty Images