Found it tough to make transition from longer to shorter version, says David Warner

David Warner had a successful Ashes series as he ended up scoring 441 runs in five matches at an average of 63 as Australia won the Ashes 4-0 in the five-match series. It was followed by an ODI series, where England thrashed the Aussies, and another T20I series where under Warner's captaincy Australia reigned supreme over England and New Zealand.

And the opener has blamed the gruelling schedule for his mental drain out that led to a slump in his form in the ODI series as he found it difficult to make a transition from the longer format to the 50 over a game. It affected his performance too and he could manage to score just 73 runs at an average of 14.60 in the 5 matches he played in the ODI series against England.

“I don’t think at all. It’s more the other way this year. I’ve found it a little bit draining that I wasn’t really timing the ball as well as I would have liked with the one-day stuff,” said Warner in an interview with Cricket.com.au.

“In my mind, I was probably going too hard – I’ve got blisters on my hands in places where I wouldn’t normally get them. I reckon I was real tense and really just trying to fight that inner demon to say, ‘go hard. And I didn’t need to,” added Warner.

The 31-year-old was raring to get back to his form and sounded delighted to play red ball cricket in South Africa, which is scheduled to start from 1st March.

“To go from here back to Test cricket, I’ll fall back into place and I’ll get my work in in the nets with ‘Hicky’ (assistant coach Graeme Hick) and ‘Boof’ (head coach Darren Lehmann) throwing me throwdowns and running drinks for the boys.”

“I can’t wait to get over there and I’m actually pumped. I’ll probably have two days (off) and then get out there in the afternoon, have a weights session and have a runaround, get used to the time zone and try to adjust to the climate,” added Warner.