News
IPL
Features arrow
Fantasy Cricket
Interviews
Watch
Social Reactions
menu menu
search
Features
June 6, 2023 - 6:01 am

David Warner’s lucky escape to self-time Test match exit

The Australian aggressor is extremely fortunate to retain a place of incumbency and to self determine his point of exit despite a major skew in his record over 103 Tests. 

Since his explosive beginnings as a Test opener, David Warner has had 14 different partners rotated at the top by Australia. Only six of them managed to withstand ten or more Tests at the other end. The collective average output at this non-Warner end reflects a longstanding issue for the Aussies.  

From the best of the lot in Chris Rogers and now Usman Khawaja to the most brittle and unstable in Joe Burns, Matt Renshaw, Cameron Bancroft, Marcus Harris and likes, Australia have found an average worth of just 37 runs at this end of the pitch over the last 103 Tests Warner has been involved in. 

Take out Rogers with his twilight boom and Khawaja’s remarkable comeback phase, the average innings output at the non-Warner end would fall below 31 runs. The struggles of this end have hurt Australia over the years, but essentially, also been a blessing in disguise for Warner, allowing the edgy and fair-weather top-order bat to continue evading the axe over the past decade. 

That Warner averages 45.57 with a strike-rate surpassing 71 wouldn’t still have enabled his ascent into Australia’s most wholeheartedly backed Test batter since the turn of the century if there was no chaos to paper over at the other end. If Khawaja were to become the Test opener he is five years back, or age was no barrier to the steadfast and resolute Rogers, and there was a supply of strong, robust opening batters from the Sheffield Shield, the selectors would’ve been in a stronger position to put Warner’s home and away split through a scanner. 

It’s been a lucky escape, one where the impactful home aggressor, who wilts into a pale shadow of himself overseas, is getting to time his own exit from the scene. He has an away average of 31.95 over 46 Tests and 88 innings worth of batting with only 24 scores of fifty and above; in stark contrast to the dominating figure Warner has tended to be in the comforting realms of Australia: 33 fifty-plus scores with an average touching 60 across 55 Tests and 95 innings. 

Relishing the dead-straight pace and bounce against the red Kookaburra whose seam wears off over time on tracks in Australia, Warner has bolstered his record and reputation within the set-up to achieve a place of incumbency. But the same cricketer has never held an imposing presence about him outside home shores, facing late movement and lateral turn, be it against the seam or spin, being fish out of water to conditions in Australia’s two biggest challenges. 

Unable to achieve foreign success against their toughest rivals over the past decade and a half, Australia would’ve dearly loved the chance to oust Warner from their plans in India and England at various stages of his career. With new ball runs holding a decisive influence on Tests in the two countries, Warner playing 13 Tests in England and 10 in India with averages worth 26.04 and 21.78 from a combined 44 innings belies cricketing logic and makes for baffling persistence with a longstanding failure. 

The left-hander has been a walking wicket for most times facing James Anderson, Stuart Broad, R Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja on these trips, able to withstand the two overseas attacks for just about 6.3 overs at the crease for each dismissal, a pedestrian outcome, which has basically left the middle-order to do heavier loading versus fresh bowling in toughest batting conditions or risk giving away major ascendancy in Tests to the two oppositions. 

No wonder, despite the indomitable Steve Smith enriching his legacy with heavy runs in such circumstances, Australia have lost 14 and won just 5 of their last 23 Tests that Warner has been part of in the two final frontiers. Warner gets clubbed with Smith and talked of in seniority and importance in the same breath when he has never been a patch on the modern-day legend with his body of work. It was never him, the feeble, infirm and shaky opening batter that Australia missed in the post-Cape Town era; it was always his mighty all-conquering peer who was bound to pose an irreplaceable figure for the think-tank. 

The onset of the ball-tampering ban and the rise in quality and depth of opposition attacks thereafter has given Warner’s Test record a split even in home conditions. When India revisited Australia back in 2020-21 with their deepest line of bowling resources, the player who churned out tons for fun during the 2014-15 series, could muster scores of only 5, 13, 1 and 48.  

It leads us to an unspoken skew. Facing South African and Indian bowling attacks at home since 2016, Warner’s average slips by more than 11 runs to 36.85 over eight matches and 14 innings. Take away the career-prolonging 200 at the MCG this summer on a flat deck, the average would further dip to 25.50; versus the rest, posing a fragile challenge at least one end, his average for the given period jumps up to 69.33 from 21 Tests and 34 innings, featuring discourse-influencing Ashes runs against an England attack struggling for steam and wicket-taking prowess on hard and fast Australian pitches.  

With such obvious blips in his record, Warner getting to enter his 104th Test at The Oval for an esteemed World Test Championship (WTC) final and determine his point of departure from the scene at SCG next summer leaves one stupefy, for the history of Test cricket has had more balanced performers left out after fewer periods of strife and less gaps in their records, with their games put under greater inspection and dispensability ultimately treated with honest action for the betterment of the side. The Australians in the past would do it even to their most valiant contributors with multiple knocks of substance played in the team’s most cherished wins.

In Warner’s case, not only the failing cog in Australia’s wheels has escaped the axe but also been the protagonist to acceptance of mediocrity from the think-tank, which has kept up with a substandard overseas performer after clearly identifying terrains where the team needed each of its resources to stand the test of times. It’s a puzzling affix, for David Warner’s presence in a Test in England ahead of his fourth UK Ashes summer, poses perhaps the biggest misfit in modern times. Huge compromise on Australia’s desired aim. A lucky escape.