(Reuters) – Australia opener David Warner said he will call time on his test career after playing against Pakistan at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) next January, if he is still in the team by then.
When available, Warner has been a fixture at the top of the Australian order since his debut in 2011 but his place in the side for the World Test Championship final and Ashes series has been called into question after a run of poor form.
The 36-year-old said on Saturday that he wanted to play on until the 2024 Twenty20 World Cup but would call time on his test career after the third test against Pakistan, before the two-match series against West Indies that follows.
“You’ve got to score runs. I’ve always said the World Cup will be my final game,” Warner told reporters in Beckenham, England.
“I think I probably owe it to myself and my family, if I can score runs here and continue to play back in Australia, I can definitely say I won’t be playing that West Indies series.
“If I get through this and I can make the Pakistan series, I will definitely finish up then.”
Warner was born in a hospital a few hundred metres from the SCG and raised in the nearby eastern suburbs of the city, where he still lives.
Apart from a defiant 200 against South Africa in December, Warner has struggled for runs in recent tests, making a total of 26 in three innings in the recent tour of India before returning home injured.
He had a dire series in England during the last Ashes tour, averaging 9.50, the worst ever by an opener to play 10 innings in a series, with paceman Stuart Broad taking his wicket seven times.
He had a better time of it in 2015, scoring 418 runs at an average of 46.44.
Australia coach Andrew McDonald last month backed Warner to deliver at the top of the order in next week’s WTC Final against India at the Oval and the Ashes series starting at Edgbaston on June 16.
(Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Ed Osmond)
