Warner quietly announces his retirement from international cricket after Afghans beat Bangladesh in T20 WC

Australia batting great David Warner’s 15-year international career, which was filled with both spectacular victories and controversy, ended in an anticlimactic manner after Afghanistan defeated Bangladesh to advance the previous winners of the T20 World Cup to the Super Eight round.

Australia, the 2021 winners, only had two points after their victory over Bangladesh, which put them in third place in the Super 8s Group 1 standings. They had lost cruelly to India and shockingly to Afghanistan.

The 37-year-old Warner, who made his international debut in January 2009 in a T20I match, thus made a low-key exit from international cricket with Australia’s 24-run loss to India on June 24 at Gros Islet being his last match.

As befitting one of Australia’s greatest batters of all time, there was no guard of honor or standing ovation. Suryakumar Yadav produced a low catch to allow him to edge Arshdeep Singh with six runs off six balls throughout the match. Without knowing if it was his final game, he left the field with his head down.

Warner has taken his time retiring. He participated in his final Test match against Pakistan in January 2023 and his final ODI match during the World Cup final victory over India in November 2023. He has been hinting for a while that this T20 World Cup would be his last competition.

At an average of 33.43 and a strike rate of 142.47, he finishes as Australia’s top scorer with 3,277 runs from 110 matches, making him the eighth most productive hitter in the world in the T20 format. In the shortest format, he scored a hundred and twenty-eight fifty.

From 112 Tests, he has scored 8,786 runs at an average of 44.59 with 26 hundreds and 37 fifties between 2011 and 2024.

He also scored 6,932 runs from 161 ODI matches at an average of 45.30 with the help of 22 centuries and 33 half centuries.

With nearly 19,000 runs in international cricket and 49 centuries in all forms, Warner has admitted that the sandpaper gate incident that happened at Newlands, Cape Town during a Test match against South Africa in 2018 would always be associated with him.

Warner received the same one-year ban as the team’s captain at the time, Steven Smith, for his role in the Newlands Test incident in which Cameron Bancroft used sandpaper to scuff the ball.
Warner was also banned for life from taking any leadership role in the Australian cricket setup.

“I think it’s going to be inevitable that when people talk about me in 20 or 30 years’ time, there will always be that sandpaper scandal,” he said last week at North Sound ahead of Australia’s Super 8 clash against Bangladesh.

“But for me, if they’re real cricket tragics and they love cricket, (as well as) my closest supporters, they will always see me as that cricketer – someone who tried to change the game.
“Someone who tried to follow in the footsteps of the openers before me and try and score runs at a great tempo and change Test cricket in a way.”

Warner was also a part of the IPL side Sunrisers Hyderabad from 2014 till 2021, and led the franchise to its only title in 2016.

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