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Tragic moment will stay with me: Warner

Batsman talks about the loss of friend and teammate Phillip Hughes

David Warner says the moment Phillip Hughes fell at the SCG on November 25 still replays in the back of his head and “always will”.

Warner said that for himself, Brad Haddin, Nathan Lyon and Shane Watson – who were all in the field for New South Wales when Hughes was felled by a bouncer – it was a moment that would never leave their minds.

“When I look back and reflect on it, you almost knew then and there that we had to be prepared for the worst,” Warner wrote in a column for New Corp.

“Holding his hand as we rode together in the medicab, and how I saw him on the field, it’s not what I wanted my last image of him to be.”

Warner, who scored twin centuries in emotional first Test victory against India in Adelaide, said he did not even want to pick up a cricket bat in the days leading up to Hughes’s funeral.

“I spent almost nine hours on the golf course and at the driving range the day after Hughesy died, just contemplating what was going to happen to myself.

“I was speaking to my fiancée Candice about the Adelaide match a lot and I can’t thank her enough for her support.”

He also gave credit to Australia team psychologist Michael Lloyd.

“I was saying to ‘Lloydy’ that returning to Australian training wasn’t about facing my fears, it was about going out there and doing something that had been taken away from my little mate.

“There were serious thoughts there about pulling out of the Test; I didn’t want to play.”

But Warner said in the end he knew he had to “get out there and do it for my mate”.

“When I got out there on day one, those first couple of overs where I hit all those boundaries, that was all adrenalin. I don’t think that was me actually playing.

“Eventually I brought it back and started playing within myself again.”

Winning in the final hour of the match was “fitting”, Warner said, describing the celebrations after the emotional victory as “unbelievable”.

“For our victory song we tried to get the whole way around the 408 symbol on the outfield, but there wasn’t enough of us, so we decided to go around the zero and form a zero ourselves.

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“It was quite emotional for Nathan Lyon, who sings our team song. He would usually stand in the middle, but we didn’t want to have anyone in the middle because that spot was for Hughesy.

“He was our 13th man and we felt like he was the one who deserved to lead the song.

“I know from now on, whenever I get to 63, it will be nerve wracking, but I will raise my bat to the sky.”