Rampant Warner creates history

David Warner has become just the third batsman in history to thrice register hundreds in each innings of a Test match, blazing 116 from 113 balls to help propel Australia to a near unbeatable position on day three of the series opener against the Black Caps in Brisbane.

Warner showed on day one that a badly broken thumb had done nothing to hamper his batting ability as he cruised to a sublime 163, and his appetite for runs was again on display in the second innings as he put a hapless New Zealand to the sword in concert with an equally ruthless Joe Burns.  

With license to thrill from his captain who was keen to push the lead towards 500 in a hurry, the left-hander set the early tone by racing to 50 from 44 balls. 

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Now the elder statesman of the opening pair, he showed his maturity by collecting his runs in ones and twos as the field spread and Burns continued to show his own impressive penchant for scoring at a dizzying rate. 

A mid-afternoon rain delay gave Steve Smith the opportunity to command more from his troops, who had already surged to a scarcely believable 0-173 after 30 overs. 

"We actually thought we were doing very well when we came off for the rain break, and Steve said to go a bit harder," Warner mused at day's end. "At 30 overs, 0-170, we actually thought we were going alright. 

WATCH: The day three wrap from Brisbane

"You probably saw I tried to chip one out of the park first ball back, but yeah, our instructions were to try to get to 500 as fast as possible and that's what we tried to do, and I think we've achieved that at the moment." 

And how. Like any good deputy, Warner obliged his captain's orders, moving from 69 to 102 in just 29 balls and raising the risk factor as he survived a missed stumping and cleared long off by just a couple of metres for his first six of the innings. 

A four driven along the carpet through cover paved the way for the milestone and the obligatory leaping celebration, and also signalled the beginning of some brief pyrotechnics, as he took Mark Craig for six, four, four from consecutive deliveries before holing out attempting to clear deep midwicket with a trademark switch hit. 

Warner joins run machines Ricky Ponting and Sunil Gavaskar in posting back-to-back hundreds on three occasions in Tests, and his 14th hundred in 44 matches puts him level with batting greats Michael Slater (74 Tests) and Ian Chappell (75) on the all-time Australian century-makers list. 

Only 15 players now sit above him on that list, all of them household names, but none excepting Sir Donald Bradman boast a ratio to match the 29-year-old’s 5.92 innings per hundred.

Since truly establishing himself at the top of the order with a century in the first Test of the 2013-14 Ashes, Warner has been among the world’s most prolific scorers, registering at least a half-century in 17 of the 22 Tests he has played. 

The opening batsman has also proven the perfect weapon in setting up a declaration, scoring big runs at a fast pace to give his captains the luxury of picking their desired time and total before closing an innings. 

In the third innings of Tests in the past two years, he has made an incredible six hundreds and five fifties from 14 trips to the crease, averaging 87.92 and striking at 80.15 in the process. 

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Ponting’s three back-to-back hundred efforts came inside five magical months in the summer of 2005-06, with the former skipper coming within a solitary run of achieving the feat for a fourth time three summers later against South Africa in Melbourne, dismissed for 99 after making 101 in the first innings. 

Gavaskar, the first player to reach 10,000 Test runs, managed twin hundreds once in April 1971, then twice in November-December 1978.