Can Australia really deem Warner a Test match success?
Australia carried their accidental Test cricketer too long despite flaws and prolonged failure in major conquests.
Two things are important when you’re making a cricketing opinion: the tone and the precision. If Mitchell Johnson hadn’t erred on those two counts and stuck his guns purely against David Warner’s prolonged dip as a Test opener, he would’ve found support instead of accusations of grinding a personal axe.
He probably was. In reopening the wounds healed by time since the ball-tampering saga and questioning whether the extravagant opener truly owned his role and responsibility in the Newlands fiasco, Johnson unfortunately lost his way after beginning on a justified footing.
Neither it’s smart to bash a player on ethical front while making a cricketing opinion nor it sits wise to vent your frustration out at him, for then the opinion you started with gets lost amid the noise and doesn’t strike the code with public. As it expectedly happened. The media and ex cricketers got involved, opinions flooded, suggestions were made for the two to mend their past before Pakistan came to town and pretty kindly settled the matter by handing Warner a Test hundred in Perth.
Johnson would’ve been disappointed with how the episode played out but he was the one who made the rookie error of not letting cricket stand at the forefront of his words. We shall not repeat his mistake. Before Pakistan came to Warner’s farewell party and danced with him, the Australian opener was averaging 28.90 over 25 Tests and 44 innings in the middle since the start of 2021. No one else among the top 6 Australian bats averaged below 40 for the period.
Take out a career-prolonging double ton at MCG against an in-transition South African attack, Warner’s average dips further to a woeful 24.25 with just six fifty plus scores in 43 knocks and less than 8 overs an innings survived at the most critical spot. Not only was Warner not scoring enough, he was exposing the rest of the line-up to the shining new ball and piling on their pressure for good three years, where, thankfully, Khawaja, Head, Marsh and Labuschagne stood up to task along with the great Steve Smith.
Australia refused to cast out their misfit despite honest calling on the outside and gave Warner a farewell series. I’ve always maintained, regardless of the name involved, teams have greater reasons to enter a series and a Test match than to hand the player a glittery send-off. As grateful as you maybe of a player’s service and contributions, his departure shall not stall your quest to grow and evolve even temporarily. Never shall a selector or the head of the team management be losing sight of a team’s present and future needs just to cater to the popular word and what warms the fans’ hearts. Fans can be emotional, a cricketing head must not be.
Sandeep Patil didn’t ask Sachin Tendulkar if he wishes to end his One-Day career with a farewell game in Mumbai. He minced no words telling the Master the team is moving forward to the 2015 World Cup. Sure enough, Tendulkar was compelled to retire from the format he dominated in all shapes and forms because that was what was right for the team. Patil loved Tendulkar, he loved the Indian team more. Unlike Srikkanth, no way, he would’ve handed Tendulkar an easy chance in Bangladesh just to produce an emotional 100th hundred. India Cricket today is missing Patil’s courage and confidence in dealing with Rohit and Kohli’s T20I careers. As do Australia, with George Bailey.
Bailey cleverly managed to ignore Johnson’s cricketing idea and this is where I hold the Australian media responsible: no one asked him, why has he let Warner’s spot go untouched for so long without putting his performances under scrutiny? Why were they more concerned with what the former cricketers are saying than to uphold the cricketing matters and put a knife out on Warner’s on-field output? What did Australia gain futuristically by letting Warner realise his dream to end it at the SCG rather than asking the next opener in the pipeline to come in and gain self-confidence this summer ahead of a more challenging assignment in New Zealand?
In truth, Bailey’s treatment of Warner reflects on a systematic pattern in Australia dealing with the southpaw’s Test career over the years. Unlike the mighty Aussies of the past, this Australia isn’t as ruthless in selection and showing players the door once they fail to adhere to their roles and responsibilities.
Quite hypocrite, too, compromising and lacking clarity. Australia couldn’t have been more open and ambitious in declaring England and India as their two biggest conquests, having not tasted Test series success there since 2001 and 2004. Yet, Warner’s horrific showings in the two nations over multiple trips and a large sample size have been ignored curiously.
No Test player should be allowed to play 112 times if he fails two basic examinations: lateral movement and turn off the pitch. Warner has failed miserably here over a decade. He finishes with an average of 21.78 over 10 Tests and 19 innings in India and 26.48 over 19 Tests and 37 innings in England. The 37-year-old batted 56 times in Australia’s two greatest challenges and produced no century. Despite being a frequent traveller for Ashes and Border-Gavaskar Trophy, that his performances never truly improved in these lands with experience underlines it as an issue of technique and glaring holes about it.
The 2015 series during a dry English summer when the left-hander made five half-centuries in nine innings remains Warner’s only Ashes trip with a 30+ average. Either side of encouragingly plundering 418 runs at 46.44 apiece that tour, the man’s England tryst only ended in a heartbreak and overall scaring experience. When he returned to face the poms in 2019, the Australian assaulter was taken on a toast by Stuart Broad’s excellent usage of the away swingers and wobble seam balls from around-the-wicket, some of which were unplayable but equally exposing of longstanding chinks in Warner’s armoury.
Warner’s disastrous 95 runs in 10 innings reinforced his England problems: his angled bat, for example, it keeps coming down from wide of off-stump, if not gully, to free-up his hands and open up strokes on both sides of the wicket, only to leave a decent gap for the deliveries aimed at the stumps or to move close to it. 11 of Warner’s 35 Ashes dismissals in England were either bowled or LBW while 10 were caught by the wicketkeeper. Of the remaining 14, seven times he was taken comfortably in the slip cordon.
Warner loved the Australian length. When the delivery landed three-quarter and beyond short off the stumps and came in straight alignments, a strong player of pace and bounce, he had no qualms dispatching the seamers off his extravagant pull and elegant cut shot. In England, attacks pitched it full to him and made him drive and push at the ball, only for the late swing and seam to thwart his downswing. A Virender Sehwag ‘clone’, Warner hammered it past mid-off and covers when it was overpitched but didn’t have the precise footwork to counter the late movement. Combine it with hard hands and you have a walking wicket for Broad and Anderson to feast on.
The advent of the wobble-seam ball and more right-arm seamers going around-the-wicket to left-handers at the height of the bowling era only made life tougher for him. It isn’t that Warner wouldn’t have been working hard on his game, for what has always been an earnest and passionate cricketer, it’s just that there were too many holes to plug in his technique whilst the bowlers upskilled for him keep his nose above the water.
Experiences of the ball swinging late in the air during the 2013 and 2015 trips forced Warner to rethink his stance and strategy ahead of the 2019 Ashes. From the screenshots below, one can see he did devise a method, which was to stand outside the crease in an effort to force the bowler’s to land it shorter and indirectly reduce their swing while also diminishing his backlift.
From a high backlift player, Warner transformed into one who tapped his bat till quite deep into the act before facing the bowler. The idea was to take the full-pitchers on and play along the turf. Sound on paper, this idea, however, robbed Warner of a fraction of a second worth reaction time to Broad’s inswingers and outswingers both. Since he would stay in his bat-tap position for a split-second longer, the left-hander’s downswing now took place well after Broad had released the ball even. Below is how this dismissal at Edgbaston panned out. Notice how at each critical point, Warner is late to the ball.
Broad has released this indipper halfway through the pitch but Warner has only just raised his bat. Then even as the ball has landed in what with a normal back-and-forth stance would be the good-length region, Warner hasn’t quite entered his defensive push. From there, it was imminent that the delivery would crash into his pads well before the batter could even get around it. Having originally set himself up to tackle the full pitcher, Warner gave himself minimal time to counter the very same ploy with an exaggerated forward stance but a late downswing. This dismissal, which clearly indicates a batter anticipating an inswinger with the head tilted fraction too far outside off, the leg-stump visible and the body falling over, would’ve pained Warner no end.
This dismissal was a critical one in how the Broad-Warner duel shaped up over the course of the series. As it happened to Kohli after this second-innings leave off Liam Plunkett at Lord’s in 2014, Warner kept playing for the ball coming in thereafter and couldn’t cover for the deliveries leaving him. Even when he should’ve just been letting the ball go, Warner failed to take his bat out of the way on two instances and edged a Broad outswinger to the wicketkeeper. It isn’t that Warner’s downswing on this trip was starting from an incorrect angle, he was just way too late in reacting to the ball and raising his shoulders. By no means, a strong player of pace, shall he find himself in this position.
It isn’t that because Warner was now expecting the incoming ball did he stop getting out to it in the series. He didn’t. This revealing Sky Sports special being evident, Warner was out four of the seven times Broad dismissed him off the inside edge and less times on the outside edge. His overall split for the series was 4–6, though, which Warner would’ve still hated since on this trip, he had intended to cover for the full-pitchers and inswingers and wasn’t clearly getting his bat down from gully or playing with an angled willow. He was just late to react to the ball. The dismissal below, for example. Okay, the ball does tail in quite disconcertingly after pitching, but how come despite showing a relatively straight face of the bat does Warner create such an alarming gap for it to sneak in?
Warner fought these demons and technical issues right throughout his career in England. Conditions in UK are never easy but he made them appear unplayable. He tried orthodox and unorthodox stance, different backlifts and downswings, defensive and attacking gear. But could never really succeed. He was out 13 times on the inside edge, 20 times off the outside edge and twice off the upper body in away Ashes Tests over four trips, in which only 13 out of his 35 innings featured a score above 35 and on only 10 occasions did he spent 10 or more overs in the middle.
If one includes the WTC final against India, 15 other openers plied their trade in England in Tests involving Warner. An average output off the bat of these 16 gents would give us 31.83 as a base number of runs and 61.71 balls per stay in the middle. Warner averaged only 27.08 and survived just 42.66 balls an innings per dismissal. The conditions in England were tough to extreme but Warner was worse than an average opener who encountered them.
The story was much the same in India. 15 openers embraced the surfaces in India in Tests including the Australian and came up with an average worth 34.83 runs and 68.34 balls per dismissal survived in the middle. Warner averaged 21.72 for Australia in these Tests and lasted just a fraction above 40 deliveries before the inevitable. Just like in England where it swings and seams more, the new-ball skids and turns off the deck with greater bite and venom on Indian pitches. An opener has to overcome it. Warner was worse than an average Border-Gavaskar Trophy player at this task over three trips and 10 years.
Warner was thrown in Ashwin’s cage and asked to come out unscathed. The toughest job as a left-hander in Test cricket today. The great off-spinner accounted for him on six occasions in these 10 Tests. Set-up brilliantly by the one going past him, Ashwin eventually ran through Warner’s inside edge on all these instances. He was out LBW four times and bowled twice. Ashwin can be unplayable in India. He averages 20.87 over 55 Tests and 337 scalps. But an even more ruthless and cruel 19.20 against the left-handers.
It would, however, be oversimplifying to suggest Warner had been reduced to such helpless state by Ashwin and turning pitches. Yes, he was unfortunate to travel to India during the ‘Ashwin Era’, but where the Ashwin era stands unique for touring batters in India is that unlike older times, there is no respite from the other end also.
Warner and other Australian batters have not had the luxury which Matthew Hayden did in his 2001 magnum opus facing Harbhajan and little else. The astonishing rise of left-arm spinner Ravindra Jadeja from Ashwin’s shadows to a great bowler and allrounder aside, India today boast of a fantastic pace attack to exploit Warner’s weakness with the swinging ball earlier on. Usman Khawaja’s 333 runs at 47.57 on turning pitches during the last trip thus rank higher in my book than whatever Hayden achieved.
Unlike Hayden facing Agarkar, pre-’07 Zaheer and Pathan, Warner has had to counter Shami, Umesh, Bhuvneshwar, Ishant 2.0, Siraj and only been lucky not to face Bumrah on these shores. The third spinner today is not Kulkarni or Raju, or Powar or Mishra. It’s either Axar or Kuldeep. In England, Warner at least had one decent trip to show for his efforts; in India, he had none. Neither of his three India tours finished with an average of 25. He made just three fifty-plus scores over 19 innings, of which only six times did he surpass the 25-run mark and spent more than 10 overs in the middle. I feel for him, his life was tough, but he never failed to make it worse for the rest of the batting.
That the India challenge only accentuated with every trip should’ve forced Australia into a rethink on Warner post the 2017 series itself. But they continued fetching their bets on him, expecting a different result while doing the same thing all over again. Warner made 1 & 10 in Nagpur and 15 in the first-innings in Delhi before concussion relieved him of his misery. Those were the two Tests they desperately needed a stable opening stand to ease some of the burden shared by Smith and Labushagne. But even as Khawaja and Head, two left-handers, mind you, enhanced their reputation surviving Ashwin over four Tests, Warner lived up to it.
They were one decent batting effort at Kotla away from rewriting the history books in India. Who knows what would’ve happened if, just like they’ve done now, Australia had explored ways to replace Warner and frontloaded their better players of spin instead of carrying him through. Warner’s has always been a lucky escape. He wasn’t just a walking wicket in England and India with his flaws and gaps but shaped poorly even against lesser touring challenges in Pakistan, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and West Indies. It was only in UAE, Bangladesh and South Africa, where he impressively produced his career-best away series in 2014, did Warner managed an average of 35.
Outside of that 2014 South African trip, Warner remained a player who loved it when the ball arrived in straight alignments but succumbed the moment it moved in the air and off the pitch. He was equally a fair-weather player even in home conditions. Warner struck narrative-influencing runs against an English attack incapable of truly overcoming the hard Australian tracks on their Ashes trips Down Under. He would feast on English seamers, who were used to kissing the surfaces to extract seam movement back home, but didn’t have the physique, pace and nous to bang the ball in and create consistent chances in Australia.
Warner averaged 51.54 in home Ashes series with three centuries and seven half-centuries in 15 Tests, of which, notably, only one of his hundreds and two of his half-centuries came in the first-innings of the Test match. Even at home, whenever England seamers found hint of early moisture and semblance of swing in the air, Warner’s output suffered a downward curve. A fair-weather bat, Warner sat on top of third-innings lead in Ashes and smashed the halpless arch-rivals.
Outside his hundred on a flat MCG road in 2017, his first and second innings average for home Ashes fell to 40.75 and 40.83, before jumping up to 56.37 in the third and 112.0 in the fourth innings once the tracks eased out and became perfectly suited for his batting. When England played an Ashes Test in Hobart, offering conditions overly similar to the conditions back home, Warner made two ducks.
The only time Warner loved facing India in Australia was when India’s inexperienced pace attack offered him runs on both sides of the wicket during the 2014–15 series. Those four Tests had pitches criticised in Australia for the first time in my lifetime. Warner missed the 2018–19 series and made scores of 5, 13, 1 and 48 when India returned Down Under with their greatest ever fast-bowling arsenal in 2020–21. Against South Africa, his post-2016 record would take its own beating either side of an MCG double ton which came on the verge of an axing.
Test runs aren’t quite made against the best options of an attack but the ability to withstand them over a sample size reflects quite well on a batter’s prowess. Warner was out five times in six innings for 36 runs at home against Ashwin, 3 times for 90 versus Steyn, twice for 120 runs facing Rabada and five times for 241 runs taking on Anderson. Ashwin dominated Warner even in Australia and though he managed to thwart Rabada and Anderson, he couldn’t survive Steyn long even outside his peak in 2012 and 2016.
For all the flak we could direct their way, it would be childish to assume that Australia weren’t aware of Warner’s flaws and trails whenever the challenge was stiffer at the Test level, home and away. More than us probably. But the truth to Warner’s lucky escape lied in a weak-footed ‘other end’ at the top and overall circumstances he spent his Test career in.
Warner had 14 different Test opening partners since the beginning of his career back in the 2011–12 home summer. Only six of these players managed to sustain themselves for 10 or more Tests before being thrown back to domestic first-class cricket. This 14-member list, spanning from the best of the lot in Rogers and now Khawaja to the most brittle and unstable in Joe Burns, Matt Renshaw, Cameron Bancroft, Ed Cowan and Marcus Harris, gives us a collective ‘other end’ average of 39.72 at the top. Handy, you’d think. Take out Rogers and Khawaja’s 97 innings and trim the list further down to only those with 10 or more Tests, the ‘other end’ worth slips below 31 with only six hundreds and just over 11 overs survived per innings.
That Warner managed to swim above the chaos at the ‘other end’ for the best part of Australia’s journey between Rogers and Khawaja’s second wings helped him find sympathy from the selectors. He was anyway scoring those popular Ashes runs at home, failures of other openers Australia trialed further acted as an indirect shield in Warner’s favour as the management feared opening two ends up when one was already in jeopardy, something I wrote below in my ‘CricXtasy’ piece also before the Test Championship final.
The fact that Australia have refrained from going back to Bancroft despite him jamming hard at the doors of selection and will not be giving Renshaw an opening slot even as he returns to the squad reflects on how little confidence they, Harris and Burns inspire in the minds of the selectors. Partly the reason why Smith could almost will himself to an opener’s gig is the minimal stocks these options carry in the memory banks of the decision-makers, who don’t feel encouraged by a Bancroft dominating a Sheffield Shield season, having previously also seen how his ascent to the top level eventually pans out.
The Shield is suffering itself. Hailed as the premier domestic first-class competition in the world, once lauded as the second best quality of red-ball cricket outside Tests, the Shield has declined in standards because of the Big Bash League (BBL) hogging the space for the height of the Australian summer, with each first-class season forced into a divide and failing to provide players consistent enough game time to truly horn their techniques and develop their overall game.
It’s affected both rungs of the clan. If you’re a multidimensional player with aspirations to represent Australia across formats, you’ll find yourself switching formats without ample enough space to prepare earnestly for any. And if you happen to be a first-class specialist, you have to wait another two months after the fifth or the sixth round of Shield match to build on the gains you fetched earlier in the summer.
In a pace-dominant set-up, the spinners were always the marginalised group, but now neither the pacers bowl long enough spells match after match to emerged as robust products nor do the batters stand a chance to forge a prolific summer without overcoming a BBL-caused interruption in their rhythm and development.
With 10 rounds each of the Shield and List A matches in the past, and critically, just six teams to contend for in the senior domestic space, Australian players used to reach the ‘A’ set-up and the international arena with their games already drilled with solidity and range to conquer most challenges. Now, they appear shallow and excessively fragile or take longer to establish their footing. Think of Khawaja and Head here. Why, Australia’s backup fast-bowling is in worrying state and their batting alternatives often vulnerable and start on shaky grounds.
It wasn’t the case when Smith began his first-class career but Head is a product of this BBL-ravaged domestic set-up and thus, despite obvious talent, taken time to rise into a prominent force. As has Cameron Green, who is clearly too good for Shield, but doesn’t inspire confidence of absolute readiness yet at the international stage. Warner benefitted indirectly from this for a decade, so as long as the ‘other end’ faltered, his failures and a shocking home and away split stood conveniently ignored before the next opposition to feast off arrived on familial turf and the media and fans felt overwhelmed by his flair and explosiveness at the crease.
Pakistan gave him a guard of honour. Not once but twice. Cricket Australia provided a special send-off ceremony with the family present in the stands. Words “great” and “legend” were thrown around without weight on social media. You don’t grudge a player a parting speech or feel angst that he could soak a huge reception and applause on adieu at an iconic venue like SCG. But did he truly deserve reaching thus far? Put hand on heart, would Australia really be honest with themselves calling Warner a success and great of Test match cricket? I don’t think so.
