As drinks were served yesterday afternoon at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the scoreboard stat-o-matic produced a figure for the crowd to chew on concerning the “fastest Australian to 6,000 Test runs”. There was Don Bradman, of course, in his role of everyday outlier; fourth in the list, slightly in arrears of Ricky Ponting and Matthew Hayden, came man of the moment David Warner, who had also just come by his 21st Test century. The statistic itself, of course, was something of a misnomer: the record, more precisely, concerned the fewest Test innings to achieve the relevant landmark, in this case 129. Yet how else does Warner come by records other than “fast”? Since earning a T20 cap for Australia on this ground nearly nine years…

Source: The Times December 26, 2017 09:05 UTC