- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
David Warner may have just one innings left to save his Ashes spot after his extraordinary form slump continued last night on day one of the fourth Ashes Test in Manchester.
Warner looks lost. Stuart Broad has taken up residence in his muddled mind. Quite remarkably, the veteran English quick has dismissed Warner five times from seven innings this series as the Australian has cobbled together just 79 runs at 11.
Among that paltry haul are six single-figure scores. Even Warner’s one score of note – 61 in the first innings at Leeds – came after his outside edge was beaten close to a dozen times early in his innings as Broad and Jofra Archer toyed with him.
What appears to be the core of his problem is not an issue that is easily addressed. In England there is perhaps no more important skill for a top order batsman than knowing the precise location of their off stump.
That has been underlined by the sensational performance of rookie Marnus Labuschagne, whose stand out attribute has been his ability to leave so many deliveries.
No batsman in this series has shouldered arms to a greater percentage of deliveries than Labuschagne, who has left more than 30 per cent of the balls he’s faced.
England have found it very difficult to get him to spar at deliveries outside off stump, something the likes of Warner, Usman Khawaja, Matthew Wade and Tim Paine have done again and again.
Not surprisingly, each of those four players have had poor series with the bat.
David Warner (Photo by Ryan Pierse – CA/Cricket Australia/Getty Images)
Labuschagne, meanwhile, has frustrated England. Unable to just stack the slips cordon and wait for him to nick off like the rest, England have been forced to attack his strength.
The Queenslander is very effective off his pads but England last night targeted his stumps in an effort to get him playing at more deliveries.
Labuschagne duly picked off a number of these deliveries, clipping them through the leg side for runs with ease as he played another valuable knock.
Contrast that with Warner. Never before in his long and brilliant Test career has he looked so rudderless at the crease.
The around the wicket line adopted by England’s right arm quicks has left him completely confused by which deliveries to play and which to ignore.
Sometimes, like last night, he’s ended up doing a fatal mixture of both. The first ball he faced, from Broad coming around the wicket, Warner left a ball that angled in and was not far from clipping his off stump – too close for comfort.
The next delivery was well wide of off stump, exactly the kind of delivery Warner can comfortably ignore. Instead he half committed to playing it, half committed to leaving it and fully committed to giving ‘keeper Jonny Bairstow a catch.
He was out in almost identical fashion in the first Test as Broad again had him unsure whether to play or leave. Broad is coaxing Warner into playing at deliveries that he need not because of the way he’s also threatened his inside edge across the series.
He has had Warner both bowled and LBW with deliveries that continued on with the angle into the left hander.
Warner now clearly has no idea how to line up Broad. In the process he has lost his biggest weapon – his natural aggression. Warner’s success as a Test batsman has been the way he’s often flipped the script in the opening hour of an innings.
Can Davey claw back some respectability – and some form? (AAP Image/Dave Hunt)
In these first dozen or so overs with the new ball the bowlers normally dominate, with the batsmen reduced to trying to get through that period and prosper later.
Warner had a unique ability to very quickly turn the pressure around on to the opening bowlers by lacing boundaries from the first over. Not once in seven innings in this series has he even looked like trying to get after the English quicks early in his innings.
Warner has lost his confidence, he’s lost his flair, he’s lost his off stump and he’s possibly just one more failure from losing his Ashes spot.