David Warner played for Australia before playing a single first-class match
In January 2009 David Warner walked out at the Melbourne Cricket Ground for a Twenty20 international against South Africa, the first man since 1877 to represent Australia without first-class experience. He smashed 89 from 43 balls. His debut for New South Wales in the long-form game came almost two months later.
Warner was raised in public housing in Matraville, a suburb in the south-east of Sydney. At 13 a coach told him to switch to batting right-handed because he kept hitting the ball in the air, but his mother urged him back to his natural left-handed style, and he promptly broke his club's under-16 run-scoring record. He made first grade for Eastern Suburbs at 15.
His hitting reshaped expectations of an opener. For New South Wales he made 197 off 141 balls, a record one-day score in Australian domestic cricket. In Tests he reached a century against India at the WACA in just 69 balls in only his fifth match, and against New Zealand in Hobart he carried his bat through a fourth innings with 123 not out, only the sixth player to do so. He holds the record for most international centuries by an opening batter.
Franchise cricket loved him. He scored more than 6,000 runs in the Indian Premier League, won its Orange Cap three times and captained Sunrisers Hyderabad to their first title in 2016. He later led Sydney Thunder in the Big Bash and Karachi Kings in Pakistan's league.
His career carries a scar. After the ball-tampering scandal in South Africa in March 2018, Cricket Australia banned him from all cricket for a year and from leadership roles permanently, a leadership ban eventually lifted in October 2024. Having already won the 2015 World Cup, he came back to help Australia take the 2021 T20 World Cup, where he was Player of the Tournament, and the 2023 World Cup. He retired from international cricket in June 2024.
Source: David Warner (cricketer)
