Nottingham: David Warner turned emotional after cracking his match-winning century against Pakistan at Taunton on Wednesday. He was banned for one year following the ball tampering incident in Cape Town, and attributed his success on his return to his wife Candice Falzon.
“What kept me going was my wife and kids,” he said. “I got great support at home from my family, especially my wife… she’s just my rock. She’s unbelievable. She’s determined, disciplined, selfless. And I hold a lot of credit to her. She’s a strong woman. She is the one who actually got me out of bed during those first weeks, got me back running and training hard as I could, and prepared me for the other formats of the game I was playing. And I did play. So it was all about maintaining my level of fitness and hard work. And she really nailed that into me.”
Falzon is a retired professional Ironwoman, surf lifesaver and model. The Ironman sport was developed in 1964 in Australia by Valentine Trainor to combine the four main disciplines of surf lifesaving into a single race — swimming, board paddling, ski paddling and running.
When Warner was asked how he has managed to cope with the boos from the crowd, he said: “We don’t really hear that when we’re out there. At the end of the day we’re out there to do a job. And for me it’s just trying to score runs and having a lot of energy on the field. Boos, these are like water on a duck’s back, you get it all the time. I’ve heard it all my career. In fact it actually pushes us more and makes us knuckle down and try to score more runs if anything.”
Warner had celebrated his century against Pakistan in a strong manner, and when queried about the reason behind it he said: “For us, as a top-four unit, we always talk about scoring hundreds. Personally it’s a great thing. It obviously was a long time coming.”
Warner also feels that the ton was the reward for his hard work he’d put in during the time he was away from international cricket, “I had to get back to the normal routine of high intensity training,” he said. “Our fitness levels have to be spot on when you’re in this Australian cricket team. And I felt like I did a lot of hard work in my time off to get right.”
Before walking away, he said he was excited to learn his wife and kids were flying in to the UK. “I’m looking forward to seeing them. We are fortunate to have our families with us since we’re going to be here for a while in the UK.”
