Former Australian opener David Warner has expressed his ambition to pursue a career in coaching, predicting that sledging will be eradicated from the sport within the next decade.
The 37-year-old, who played his final Test match at the SCG this week, was renowned for his ‘attack dog’ role within the Australian team before the Cape Town ball-tampering saga in 2018. He became a polarising figure within the cricket community for his feisty behaviour, which reached boiling point during the 2018 Durban Test when CCTV footage captured his confrontation with South African wicketkeeper Quinton de Kock.
Earlier this week, Australian opener Usman Khawaja claimed that coaching staff and senior players instructed Warner to sledge opponents during the early stages of his Test career, with the Newlands sandpaper scandal prompting an overhaul of the Australian team’s culture.
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Speaking to reporters at the SCG on Saturday afternoon, Warner confirmed he was interested in pursuing coaching opportunities “later down the track”, emphasising he wouldn’t encourage young players to treat the opposition aggressively in the middle.
“Yeah, I’ve got ambitions later down the track to potentially coach; I’ll have to speak with the wife first to see if I’m allowed a few more days away,” Warner laughed.
“When I came into the team, the way that I went about it on the field was to get in people’s faces, to upset them and to get them off their rhythm when they’re batting. I was moulded into being that person.
“From my perspective, I felt that I could still give the same energy on the field without actually having to get into that battle with the opposition.
“When I first came in, I didn’t understand the nature of playing the opposition, because I didn’t know who they were, so I was never going to have to sit down with them and have a beer and get to know them, because it wasn’t like that back then.
“I’ve changed a lot of other people’s opinions as well those I’ve played with and have gone at … they’ve totally changed their opinion of me as well, which is the nature of what cricket is about.”
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Warner, who scored a dazzling 57 in his final Test innings, believes the once-fabled art of sledging will soon become a thing of the past courtesy of T20 franchise leagues such as the Indian Premier League, where cricketers share change rooms with their opponents.
“I don’t think you’ll see that kind of sledging or anything like that anymore. I think it’ll be just like a bit of laughter, a bit of banter, like me and Shaheen (Shah Afridi),” Warner continued.
“I think that’s probably the way forward. I don’t think you’ll see that old aggression again.
“It will change. In five, ten years’ time, if I am coaching, I think the whole dynamic will be changing, and it’ll be about more about cricket specifics and how you’re winning games, and not about how you get on the skin of batsmen when you’re out there.”
Warner finished his Test career with 8786 runs at 44.59, including 26 centuries and 37 fifties. He is Australia’s fifth-leading run-scorer in Test history, while only the legendary Ricky Ponting has more international hundreds for the nation.
