David Warner Fully in Our Plans For the World Test Championship Final Against India: Andrew McDonald

Australia head coach Andrew McDonald is keeping the door open for David Warner’s place in the team for the World Test Championship Final against India at Oval, London. Australia qualified for the WTC final despite a series defeat against India and the two cricketing powerhouses will meet once again on June 7 for the mega clash.

Warner recently sustained a hairline fracture during the second Test match against India in New Delhi and was ruled out of the last two Test matches of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.

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The Aussie opener is also struggling to score consistently in recent times as he has scored 571 runs in 11 matches since 2022. While in the last three Tests, he managed just 36 runs.

However, the Australia head coach suggested that Warner is in the team’s plans for the mega WTC finals.

“I think you work through that conversation, and how each player finishes is always different. Some want to go out in a certain way, and others are OK with potentially being dropped out of sides. But at the moment Dave’s fully in our plans for the World Test Championship, he’s coming back for the one-day series, he’s recovered from his injury there, so we’ll see Dave back in Australian colours on the 17th and we’ll go from there,” McDonald said as quoted by The Age.

He also talked about the tight schedule in the coming months for Australia which included the WTC final, Ashes and ODI World Cup later this year in India.

“We are continually talking to our senior players with what they have coming up. Juggling the schedule that’s in front of us. We are staring down 274 days on the road – 144 for the red-ball team, 130 for the white-ball team,” he added.

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Talking about reaching WTC final, the head coach pointed out that the journey was not easy for the Aussies as they played three series in subcontinent conditions.

“We are super excited about that. If you look at what we embarked upon at the start of Pakistan, into Sri Lanka, into India, we set that as three series in the subcontinent. We’ve come away from that with three wins, three losses and three draws,” he said.

However, McDonald admitted that the team didn’t achieve what they planned for the recently concluded Border-Gavaskar Trophy.

“That’s a pretty tough World Test Championship cycle so to finish on top of the table with that on the calendar is pretty impressive and we’re the World No. 1, too, so pretty proud of what the team’s been able to achieve, but in saying that, we didn’t achieve what we wanted to here in India,” he added.