Ashes 2023: David Warner has been bad, it would be better if he was worse

The biggest problem with David Warner is that he’s making just enough runs to avoid being dropped – but not enough to help Australia win the Ashes, writes Daniel Cherny.

It happened again to David Warner. But this wasn’t the “it” you probably expected.

All that focus heading into this match about Warner falling to Stuart Broad. It didn’t materialise. Warner cut Broad for four from the first ball of the match and thereafter didn’t look overly threatened by him. The opener saw off Broad and the new ball in both innings.

He looked solid enough too. The occasional play and miss, yes, but that will happen at the top of the order in the UK.

We had kept being told that a big score was just around the corner.

This was finally going to be the breakthrough, the innings that vindicated the selectors’ faith, the dig that silenced the haters back home.

David Warner of Australia walks off after being bowled by Chris Woakes. Picture: Getty Images

But it wasn’t. And at this point, it’s probably never going to come.

Warner made 32 and 28 in this match. In isolation, it’s not terrible. And really this is the crux of Warner’s three-year malaise. He’s rarely been THAT bad. There hasn’t been the same run of low scores as there was in 2019. He hasn’t looked completely hopeless. He has provided some useful platforms with Usman Khawaja in this series. That was the assertion used to defend his spot in the team when calls for change were coming ahead of this match, and it wasn’t without basis.

In 10 innings on this tour, Warner has reached 25 six times, but got to 50 just once and never more than 66. He has kept making enough runs to ensure he is hard to drop, but not enough to have a major say on the series.

He is averaging 28.26 over the past three years, and 25.12 for the series. What he provided in this match was entirely consistent with his short, medium and long-term form line.

Warner got a good ball – one that seamed back into him – from Chris Woakes on Friday afternoon, but it wasn’t unplayable, and he probably shouldn’t have played at it at all.

David Warner chops on! 👋

Two down. Eight to go. #EnglandCricket | #Ashespic.twitter.com/H3TICx1cOb

— England Cricket (@englandcricket) July 21, 2023

While not quite a Broad-level affliction, to see Warner chopping on was to view a familiar sight. He did it twice in the home summer against the West Indies, to Jayden Seales and Roston Chase respectively, and in the first innings of the Edgbaston Test to Broad. It is the sign of an ageing player, one whose reflexes are just that split second off, the full-blooded shots of yesteryear now clattering into the timber.

There have been a few junctures over the past 12 months where the selectors could have tapped Warner on the shoulder.

They could have done so after the tour of India, where Warner’s involvement was ended by injury.

They could have done so after the World Test Championship final and made a clean break for the start of the Ashes.

David Warner hits a boundary off the bowling of England's Moeen Ali as England's Jonny Bairstow (C) keeps wicket on day three of the fourth Test. Picture: AFP

They could have done so after the Headingley Test, where they were so keen to squeeze Cameron Green back into the side after Mitch Marsh’s heroics that they dropped Todd Murphy, ensuring the Aussies went into a Test for the first time in more than 11 years without a frontline spinner. After England amassed 592 in 107.4 overs to give itself a chance of a series-levelling victory, that call looked like a major miss.

But each time Warner’s place was up in the air, there were always semi-compelling reasons not to drop him. He was getting starts, plus he’d made that mighty 200 at the MCG in late December against South Africa, an all-time great innings that helped give Warner the licence to map a retirement plan.

That his understudy Marcus Harris had barely fared better than Warner in England four years ago helped the incumbent’s cause.

And now it is probably too late. To throw Harris into what is likely to be a decisive Ashes rubber would be dramatically against the inclination of a panel that has repeatedly backed in Warner despite his middling form.