Ashes 2019: The reason for David Warner’s dismissals lies in cricket’s currents

Australia's David Warner leaves the pitch after being caught by England's Jonny Bairstow off the bowling of England's Jofra Archer during the second day of the fifth Ashes test. Picture: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

This summer has featured two remarkable batting streaks, both of which continued at the Oval yesterday. One, of course, is Steve Smith’s; the other, perhaps less obvious, is David Warner’s.

Events in South Africa last year seemed to render their names indivisible; the season’s trends have cleaved them apart. No batsman has any business in outperforming their peers so utterly as Smith; equally, no specialist batsman of quality should decline so precipitously then so lengthily as Warner.

Not that long ago, Warner was laying waste attacks in the Indian Premier League and World Cup, proclaiming himself pumped. Even now, without a Test century since Boxing Day 2017, he remains grouped with the world’s 20 top-ranked batsmen and averages more than 45.

The whole notion of average is both historic and predictive: it is a record of the past and an anticipation of future productivity. It is on the basis of Warner’s record that, the day before this Test, his captain Tim Paine prophesied a change of fortunes: “I’ve got full confidence in David that when he does click into gear, he’s going to win us a Test match and I think it’s going to be this one.’’ Yet as of yesterday, Warner remains stuck in neutral, with 84 runs in these Ashes at 9.33.

His five took eight deliveries comprising a streaky single, a sketchy boundary and a hint of agitation. Warner has been found out in defence this English summer, twice even getting out in the act of letting the ball go. Yesterday he tried channelling the intrepid Warner of yore, and might have nicked his second ball had it not been so wide as to be out of reach.

It’s doubtful Warner touched the delivery he was adjudged by the third umpire to have nicked, or at least that the evidence was hardly sufficient to be definitive: Ultra-Edge involves marrying a continuous audio wave with a series of visual frames, and staring at the replay as though it was the Zapruder film offered no finality.

But it was if not a reckless shot, hardly a reckful one, and you almost had the feeling of a decision carried by popular demand. Warner’s failures have become English fans’ summer consolation prize: their team may have failed to regain the Ashes, but at least they’ve brought the ornery Warner down a peg or several.

It’s also fair to say that a proportion of Australian cricket followers have shared the schadenfreude. It used to be said that Kevin Pietersen getting out brought joy to fans in three countries: South Africa, Australia and England. Warner’s failures elicit guffaws in at least two.

This would be the case Sandpapergate or no. The T20 arriviste, the Test provocateur, the Aussie antagonist: Warner had auditioned for villain long before Cape Town. About his very batting there is a mano e mano quality: he attacks the ball AND the bowler. When the bowler strikes back, the effect has often been strangely karmic.

The glee at the turn in Warner’s batting affairs, then, has had a moral undertone: he is the transgressor caught up with, the biter bit. And this is, of course, an illusion. Warner’s dismissals have nothing to do with his being bad, or flash, or rich, or any of the other assumptions harboured about him, which seem at times to personalise more general objections to the state of the modern cricket, or sportsmanship, or Australia, or masculinity, or whatever floats your boat. They are part of cricket’s currents, not to be averted by piety, penance or self-abasement, and will resolve as these things usually do, through the swirl of skill, conditions, and chance.

Smith’s further relentless progress featured all three. His defence was tight, his attacking strokes decisive, his back foot drive through point from the top of the bounce and his feet together on-drive executed as laconically as ever. The day was still, the pitch sound, the light perfect, and luck there to be ridden. Smith’s fall to Chris Woakes seemed to arise from a sense of impunity: with his average for the series having swollen to 150, he simply missed a straight ball, as though it was too obvious and frankly beneath him.

It seemed to catch Australia by surprise also. Smith apart, their batting had a similar end-of-term listlessness to some of the first day’s bowling and fielding, with Warner’s not the last shot best repented. Three lbws signified faulty footwork; Mitchell Marsh will rue holing out to fine leg. As the ball softened and the shadows lengthened, Nathan Lyon and Peter Siddle added 47 from 42 balls with disarming ease, even impudence. It suggested opportunities forgone, as did Marcus Harris’s sloppy miss of Joe Denly at gully in the day’s last over. Another streak, Australia’s attempt to fashion a winning one, is now in danger.