Warner announces ODI retirement ahead of swansong Test at SCG
Sydney (PTI): Batting stalwart David Warner on Monday announced his retirement from ODI cricket alongside the end of his Test career here this week but will be continue to play T20 cricket for Australia.
The 37-year-old swashbuckling opener, however, kept the door open for himself to be available for the 2025 Champions Trophy if the Australian team needs him.
Ahead of his swansong Test at his hometown venue SCG, Warner revealed that Australia's World Cup final victory over India in November was his last match in the 50-over format.
"I'm definitely retiring from one-day cricket as well. That was something that I had said through the (50-over) World Cup (in India in 2023), get through that, and winning it in India, I think that's a massive achievement," he said at a press conference at the SCG on Monday.
"So I'll make that decision today, to retire from those forms, which does allow me to go and play some other leagues around the world and sort of get the one-day team moving forward a little bit," said an emotional Warner.
"I know there's a Champions Trophy coming up. If I'm playing decent cricket in two years' time and I'm around and they need someone, I'm going to be available."
Considered as one of Australia's and world's most destructive batters in recent times, Warner ended his one-day career as a two-time world champion after finishing the 2023 World Cup in India as his team's leading run scorer.
The left-handed opener made his ODI debut in 2009 in a match against South Africa in Hobart. Since then, he has played 161 ODIs, scoring 6932 runs at an average of 45.30 with the help of 22 hundreds and 33 fifties.
He is Australia's sixth-highest run-scorer in men's ODIs and second on the hundreds list behind Ricky Ponting who played 205 more ODI innings than Warner.
In the 111 Tests he has played so far, Warner has scored 8695
runs at an average of 44.58 with 26 hundreds and 36 fifties.
He will continue to be available for Australia in T20 cricket and is hopeful of featuring in their World Cup campaign in that format in June in the Caribbean and USA.
After the ODI World Cup in India, Warner had hinted at pushing on until 2027 although he will have been 41 by then. He said that the way the team had rebounded in India made it the ideal finishing point.
Warner holds an IPL contract with the Delhi Capitals and he could be one of the most sought after cricketers on the domestic T20 circuit.
"I definitely am keen to pursue playing Big Bash next year. There's going to be conversations behind the scenes to allow me to do that," he said.
"Obviously I've joined the Fox commentary team next year during the Test series against India, which I'm looking forward to. There's a BBL window that we're able to play, and then quite clearly there has been a lot of talk about the ILT20 which will be starting, I'm pretty sure, after the BBL."
Warner has been appointed the new captain of International League T20 (ILT20) franchise Dubai Capitals for the upcoming 2024 season.
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Sharad Pawar praised RSS after seeing how it burst fake narrative balloon of LS polls: Fadnavis
Nagpur, Jan 10: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday said NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar praised the RSS after realising how the outfit managed to overcome the fake narrative spread by the opposition in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
The opposition had claimed BJP wanted to win 400 seats to change the Constitution and end reservations, a narrative which BJP leaders later claimed hit the party hard.
On Pawar praising the RSS recently, the CM said the MVA was successful in creating a fake narrative during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
"When assembly polls were approaching, many people from diverse fields who are inspired by the RSS played their role and burst the balloon of this fake narrative. Sharad Pawar saheb is very intelligent. He would have certainly studied this aspect. He realised that this (RSS) is not a regular political power but a nationalist power. In any competition it is good to praise others," he added.
That is why Pawar may have praised the RSS, Fadnavis said.
Speaking at an interaction with senior editor Vivek Ghalsasi at Late Vilasji Fadnis Jivhala programme here, Fadnavis also said he had asked for organisational work when Eknath Shinde was made chief minister in June 2022, but senior leaders asked him to join the government.
He also said Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked him not to behave like an extra-constitutional authority in the government.
He said the decision to become deputy chief minister on the command of the party leadership earned him a lot of praise from the cadre.
After the massive mandate the ruling alliance received in the 2024 assembly polls, Fadnavis said people and party workers would not have been happy if the CM was not from the BJP.
Shinde himself agreed within minutes that the CM must be from the BJP, which itself got 132 seats and was close to a majority of its own in the 288-member assembly, he added.
On Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray meeting him during the winter sessions of the legislature in Nagpur, Fadnavis said he had announced he would not indulge in politics of revenge after becoming CM and all leaders responded positively to it.
On chances of the NCP (SP) and NCP coming closer or reuniting, Fadnavis said, "If you see the developments that took place from 2019 to 2024, I realised never say never and anything can happen. Uddhav Thackeray goes to some other party and Ajit Pawar comes to us. In politics anything can happen though I am not saying this should happen."
He praised BJP leader Arun Gujarati from whom he learnt patience, which he claimed was an important quality in politics along with the ability to take criticism.
In a lighter vein, he said, "I only get angry when I am hungry. If you see me angry then give me something to eat and my anger will go away."
