David Warner At 37: An Unstoppable Run-Machine

image-lskikcwqDavid Warner (X.com)

It was just a few hours ago that David Warner, who needs little introduction, expressed his feelings after playing what was apparently his last inning on Australian soil. 

The man who says he’s done 

He’d exclaim, “I am well and truly done!” Warner, someone whose personality mirrors his style of batting, can only be believed in saying what he did. 

He is, after all, someone who’s been passionate and importantly, expressive with little held back. 

However the whole “I’m done” thing doesn’t quite go where his numbers with the bat are concerned. 

A brilliant finish to yet another series win 

In the third and final T20I against the West Indies, Davey Warner’s score read 81 off just 49 deliveries. 

He fired no fewer than 9 boundaries and 3 massive sixes, thus smashing- not collecting - 54 of his runs by way of just hits to the fence. 

One the whole, despite ending on the losing side or the wrong side of the result, David Warner managed to emerge the top scorer from the Perth contest. 

The man who regularly outperforms youngsters 

He outperformed the big hitters on either side- whether Tim David, his teammate or Rutherford and Russell, his opponents.  

But it wasn’t just the few hours ago upon the completion of the game that David Warner expressed that he’s truly done. 

He had, as a matter of fact, expressed the same feeling even at the start of the series, stating in no uncertain terms that the forthcoming T20 World Cup will be his last International assignment as an Australian cricketer.  

And yet here he is, the man who by self admission is nearly closing in on the finish line, with the most runs scored by an Australian in the series. 

He missed out from scoring big in only one of the three T20I innings wherein he scored a 22, even as that isn’t really a flop score. The other two innings yielded a 70 (Hobart) and seen earlier on February 13, the 81. 


Establishing Dave Warner’s impact 

Warner’s an impactful batsman and when he gets going, it doesn’t take him that much of an effort to outpace even the established hitters of the game who can send the white ball down the country mile. No random-speak this. 

Even as Glenn Maxwell scored an unbeaten and rather fascinating century, that whirlwind 120, he wasn’t able to outperform his illustrious teammate in the runs department. 

Which perhaps explains the David Warner enigma in that even as his mind is telling him that this is it and that there’s no more he can possibly offer a team for whom he’s scored over 15,000 runs, his body isn’t slowing down. 

Not slowing down!

The same can be said about his reflexes. It’s a classic case of a batsman who’s established the fact that he’s done now but is still scoring and producing a quantum of runs and at a rather enviable pace. 

The dust may have settled over a series where the Australians, despite humbling the West Indians didn’t quite whitewash them as had often been the case. But David Warner, on his part, remained quite the sledgehammer. 

Not only did the standard bearer of Australian consistency with the bat went past his 3000th run eschewing deliberately in the process the hype , each of his recent fifty-plus T20 scores came at strikingly good rates. He scored his first fifty of the 20- over series at a strike rate of 194. His recent exploitation of the likes of Shepherd, Alzarri and Holder came at a strike rate of 165. 

Still going strong despite having done it all

For someone who is 37 years of age and doesn’t sport an iota of fat and has, rather strikingly, a stone-like toned body, these are exceptional numbers. They inspire envy. 

Perhaps it only makes sense to understand the place Warner occupies at present in a firmament of T20I power hitters since the Australians aren’t short of any in the particularly exciting troika of Tim David, Glenn Maxwell and Marcus Stoinis. 

The way Warner is- experienced, always ready to share his cricketing brains with his mates and with performances to show- he’s an asset. Just the kind of player who keeps coming back despite facing mishits with the bat that he makes up for.

 Moreover, he’s a T20 World Cup winner. In the 2021 edition, he even emerged as the player-of-the-series and was the man responsible for getting the Aussies off to a flier in that epic clash against the BlackCaps.

It’s just the kind of rare, deeply admirable quality that will likely keep the Australians in the hunt for what could be another title. 

It’s just the kind of thing that’ll inspire his teammates to put in that extra bit of effort that a tournament of World Cup’s proportion requires. 

That’s even if David Warner says he’s pretty much done and can’t offer more!