David Warner stuns Adelaide with the innings that should never have been

David Warner shouldn’t have been able to play that innings. The clean intensity of his attack, its consistent tempering with restraint. His progress from a former youthful fury to a current clinical precision.

The holding of that balance from the second over of the day until after the tea break, through 145 runs, until, facing Karn Sharma, the debutant legspinner, “The demons inside me probably got me out. I tried to take him over the top and I hadn’t done so all day.” It was Tuesday December 9, the first day of the new Test series against India.

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David Warner shouldn’t have been able to play at all. He was a wreck after Phillip Hughes’s death a fortnight earlier: not just losing a friend, but being there when it happened. Among the heart-crushing images of that week was Warner on the SCG’s medical trolley as it left the field, holding Hughes stable on a stretcher in a final moment of intimacy.

“The first net session I walked out of, I was nowhere,” said Warner of the lead-up to this game. “I went out and bowled to the guys, I felt like I had to do something. I didn’t want to just linger around and soak in the emotion. I went and faced the net bowlers again the next day, I think I lasted two or three balls.”

In the face of all this, and dispensing with hyperbole, Warner’s composure in walking out in front of 25,000 people to play this innings must rank among the more extraordinary achievements on a cricket field.

He should not have been able to do it, and did it anyway. As for the innings being against his style, that impression is false. Antithetically, Warner has become Australia’s most reliable batsman. In little over a year, he has scored hundreds at Brisbane, Perth, Centurion, twice in Cape Town, Dubai, and now Adelaide.

Add to that his 83 not out at this venue last year, plus four other half-centuries, and that’s a dozen times past the half-ton mark in 20 innings. Yet it seems like every ton is Warner proving himself all over again; that his work in that regard is never done.

If ever, today was the day. Ten Test centuries now in 33 games, the mark of a prodigious talent. But not just the talent to raise the numbers – the manner in which they’re raised.

For a time he made the opening stages of this Test seem like a dream sequence. So often they’re tentative – no one wants to surrender first advantage, so batsmen fence and circle and feint, cribbing runs like bread crusts in an orphanage. Chris Rogers is one such hungry Twist, but was exiled to the viewer’s end as Warner helped himself.

Even Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer at their most belligerent didn’t open games like this. After Rogers blocked out the opening over, Warner pinged three boundaries from the second. Then three from the third. Then another from the start of the fourth. Rogers had two runs from six balls. Warner had 34 from 16.

Nor were they just boundaries, but cleanly struck, perfectly placed. Cover drives for the most part, the occasional adventure square. They split the field in the clear lines of a blueprint, some demigod draftsman wielding compass and pencil. The ground held its breath at such controlled audacity.

As quickly, it subsided. For ten overs, Warner didn’t hit the fence once. Rogers did, then departed. Warner nudged. He had his start. The slips were depopulated, the Indians wary. Now was the time to go down a gear and drive a steady line. So he did, only pressing the pedal where the road allowed. His next boundary became three in five balls from the speedy Varun Aaron, including two pull shots. His half-century took 45 balls.

Shane Watson departed. Warner moved to 61 with a single. Then came his moment, one that felt more significant even than the century that would follow. As he came down to a full toss from Karn, Warner swept it behind square leg for two runs, landing on the fateful 63 not out. Warm, spontaneous applause broke out all round the ground, probably the first time in cricket that this humble number has received a standing ovation.

Warner gripped his bat by the blade, turning its face and his to the sky. The unspoken language was clear: this is for you.

Some argue that symbolism lacks true meaning, and would dispute the value of the talismans around Hughes’s death: the bats left at front doors around the world, the 408 of his Test match shirt, the retired 64 he wore in ODIs, the 63 not out of his final innings. That Test number emblazoned on the Adelaide turf, crossed by each batsman on the way to the wicket. The rows of 63 bats installed at different grounds. But there is, in the observance of rituals and the recognition of symbols, some comfort: that is why religion in all its varied forms has been an inseparable companion to human fear, confusion and sadness.

63 not out is a powerful representation of Hughes: the symbol of a good job yet unfinished, of grand potential unrealised, and of the man himself undefeated in people’s memories even as his body was felled.

“It’s a special number for us, and it will be for as long as I play cricket,” said Warner. “That’s going to stick with me for the rest of my life. I just had a gut feeling that my little mate was down the other end with me from ball one.”

Not that reaching Hughes’s last marker was as positive for him as for those applauding. “The hardest point for me for the day was when I was on 63. It was such a horrific incident… even though a spinner was bowling, just being on that number I felt in the back of my mind that it wasn’t right. I just wanted to try and get past that. Michael asked me at the other end if I was ok, and I was, but I had to step away for a couple of seconds.”

Then to the century, and the most emotional celebration: Warner’s initial hesitance before grinning and executing the trademark leap that he decided Hughes would have wanted, both arms upward, smiling at the sky, brandishing the crest to it before locking with Clarke in a fierce embrace. There was catharsis without joy, the contradiction beautifully summed up by the man himself: “It’s an honour to dedicate a hundred to Phil. I never wanted to have to do that for anyone.”

Watching on, it was easy to have a sense of destiny being fulfilled: that Warner had to do this deed on this day. But of course, as the grossly unfair lot of Hughes has showed, our thoughts of destiny are convenient fabrications after the fact. Instead it’s down to fortune, which sometimes works for you rather than against.

So fortune worked in some small way for David Warner, two weeks after it surged so powerfully against him and so many others. In the state he was in, Warner should not have been able to make any of this happen, yet such is his fortitude that he made sure it did. Athletes may get too much praise, but this deserves the highest regard.

This article was first published on Wisden India.