Bold, brilliant, flawed: Warner’s 100-Test milestone isn’t just another ton

When a cricketer reaches 100 Test matches, the custom is to take in the view from the summit, to look at the totality of a career. But David Warner has created his own customs. The ambivalence around his 100th Test appearance is very Warner, and the celebrations would be untrue if they didn’t embrace that entire spectrum of feelings.

To view the whole, an assessment is simple. He is one of the best openers to have played Test cricket for Australia or anyone else. In the hardest job to succeed in, he sits alongside names in men’s cricket such as Trumper, Woodfull, Ponsford, Morris, Simpson, Lawry, Taylor and Hayden. None won so many games by changing its tempo.

Among all the great Australian bats, all had a flaw: Doug Walters did not make a hundred in England, Ricky Ponting’s technique might not have survived the age of DRS, even Don Bradman fluffed his last innings. It’s impossible to play 100 Test matches and not have the failings exposed. Warner’s have been exposed more than most. How else could such an uninhibited personality spend a decade in the spotlight?

A common misconception about Warner is that he converted himself from a Twenty20 slogger into a Test cricketer. He had only played 29 T20 internationals before his Test debut, and while he had sparked up occasionally he had hardly set the world alight in the short format.

Where Warner found his niche was in the five-day, red-ball, traditional game. His first Test century, in his second match, remains one of his best. As Australia collapsed against New Zealand on a seaming pitch in Hobart, Warner carried his bat, making a patient, steadfast unbeaten 123. Phillip Hughes, Ponting, Michael Clarke and Mike Hussey all failed. The second top score was Usman Khawaja’s 23. In the most challenging conditions imaginable, Warner was watertight.

Fans will remember some of his more explosive performances that rewrote the rules around what Test openers do: 180 off 159 balls against India at the WACA; repeatedly dismantling England in Ashes series in Australia, setting the tone for a decade of never losing a single Ashes Test match here; his annual New Year hundreds on the Sydney Cricket Ground. Because he scored fast, he brought a kind of reverse curse on himself. When a player makes run-scoring look hard, he is praised as a gutsy grafter. Warner’s apparent ease almost devalued his achievements, when what should have been valued, above his natural hand-eye coordination, was the mental strength to take risk after risk and see each ball as one that is waiting to be hit.

Another misconception has been that Warner is a one-dimensional home-track hero. He has scored centuries in Pretoria, Dubai, Dhaka and Chittagong. England is not the only away-from-home proving ground. His dual hundreds at Cape Town in 2014 were career peaks. Newlands has never been an easy place to bat. The South African attack was Dale Steyn (who was injured during the match), Vernon Philander, Morne Morkel and Kyle Abbott. Across three days, Warner took them for 135 off 152 balls and 145 off 156.

Cape Town, of course, was also the site for the saltiest of mixed feelings about Warner, where his competitiveness broke free of all constraint and the appetite for risk became untethered from a sense of perspective. The dark cloud still sits over him and he took those actions so he deserves it, though it’s questionable that he deserves quite the public evisceration he has received. But we live in a time of emotional extremes, and those same extremes have also made Warner an extremely well-paid cricketer. By the time of his sandpaper ignominy, he was a happily married father and successful author of children’s books. Not too many cricketers have become all things, good and evil, to all people.