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Opinion
I’ve always been a bit unsure about David Warner. Sometimes I loved his tough, attacking cricket, particularly through that golden 2014-15 period.
Since those highs, he has slowly devolved from exciting, aggressive opener into a flat-track bully – only scores runs at home, and only against opposition down and out.
Consider between 2019 and now. In England, he was famously woeful, only reaching double figures twice. He came back to Australia and boosted his average by belting Pakistan across two Tests (including his big 335), then was mediocre as we flogged the Kiwis, averaging just over 40 – his highest score coming in the second innings of a dead rubber test.
In the two Tests he played against India, he scored 13, 5, 48 and 1.
Now, thanks to a social slip up from the man himself, it seems likely his only preparation for the upcoming summer of cricket will be sitting out the IPL then hoping to gain some T20 form in the World Cup.
How long will we keep carrying him?
Let’s be honest, he isn’t exactly the sort of character to build a team around. While being ousted as the instigator of Sandpapergate will go down as his most famous crime, he also has the stairwell blue with the South Africans just before Newlands, being suspended for punching Joe Root, and numerous social media outbursts.
The out and out aggression, win at all costs mentality that used to excuse this behaviour is exactly what Tim Paine is trying to get away from.
For young players around him, he isn’t exactly a defensive rock that can see off a fired-up pace bowler before the chance to counter arrives, either.
The most frustrating thing is that selectors don’t seem to see any of this. Warner, like Shaun Marsh before him, has become one of these ‘boys club’ cricketers that selectors consider invaluable. No doubt he already is set in for the Ashes.
With the English are already throwing doubt on whether they will come at all, let alone bring a full-strength team, my prediction for Warner’s summer is this: playing at home against weak opposition, he’ll score two centuries in the last two dead rubbers, buy himself another year of opening, and commentators and selectors will be banging on about the ‘aggressive attitude and fighting spirit’, which stopped working five years ago.
There is no benefit in this. He offers little at the crease and nothing to the culture.
We have the perfect opportunity to give some younger options a decent run – and this is better than anything Warner offers. It’s time to move him on.
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