WARNER CLAIMS AB MEDAL

One-vote Border win rights wrongs

DAVID Warner will head back to South Africa this week as Australia’s champion cricketer after surging to a redemptive win in the Allan Border Medal last night.

The resurrected opener’s World Cup dominance and stunning home Test summer, which included an epic 335 not out in Adelaide, was enough for him to secure a one vote win over Ashes hero Steve Smith.

It was Warner’s third AB Medal victory, and he was also crowned T20 player of the year. Last year’s winner, Pat Cummins, was third, while Marnus Labuschagne capped his rise to prominence by taking out the Test Player of the Year award on the back of 1340 runs in just 11 Tests, with four hundreds.

Adelaide Strikers’ BBL and Redbacks’ bowler Wes Agar, 23, was named Bradman Young Cricketer of the Year.

Australian limited-overs captain Aaron Finch was named one-day player of the year for the first time.

But the night belonged to Warner, who started the voting period serving the end of a 12-month international suspension for his role in the sandpaper scandal in Cape Town.

He lost millions in earnings, including his $2 million contract in the IPL, where he was also stripped of his captaincy at the Sunrisers Hyderabad, to go with his ban from ever holding a leadership position in Australian cricket.

But the 33-year-old returned to the game, chastened but determined to right those wrongs, first via club cricket, then back in the IPL last year where he was embraced again by the Indians.

Warner was the leading run-scorer in the competition, which he then backed up by scoring 647 for Australia at the World Cup, including three hundreds.

What followed was a period of remarkable failure when he was terrorised by English bowlers Stuart Broad and Jofra Archer in the Ashes.

Warner scored just 95 in five Tests in a form dip unlike anything he had experienced in his career. It was the lowest total of any opener in a fivematch series in Test history.