Renshaw and Warner seize the day

Australia 3 for 365 (Renshaw 167*, Warner 113, Handscomb 40*) v PakistanScorecard and ball-by-ball details

David Warner enshrined himself among the greats of the game’s past before Matt Renshaw secured his Australian future. On a day of contrasting openers and innings at the SCG, Warner blasted his way to the first century before lunch in Tests in Australia, then 20-year-old Renshaw dug in to become Australia’s seventh-youngest centurion.

If Warner’s innings was the favourite of a festive New Year’s crowd, Renshaw will have delighted Australia’s selectors, coaches and players with a display of the sort of calm assurance so vital to Test match success. Renshaw styled much of his game on England’s Alastair Cook: working the ball repeatedly off his hip then driving and cutting occasionally he played very much the spit of an innings the older man made against Australia on this ground six years ago.

Having played a major role in Australia’s win in Melbourne by scoring a rapid century, Warner doubled down with another intimidatory batting effort against Pakistani bowling that mixed the presentable with the ordinary on a blameless SCG pitch. Warner joined Victor Trumper, Charles Macartney, Sir Donald Bradman and Majid Khan as the only other men to score a century in the very first session of a Test. Majid was the most recent batsman to get there, making his century against New Zealand in Karachi in 1976-77.

While Warner was unable to go on for long after the interval, Renshaw wedged himself into the …

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