Warner and company need to answer the age-old question

All those confident assertions that David Warner is finished seem a little less certain after the veteran Australian opener posted his fourth half century in the IPL in the early hours of Friday morning.

Delhi Capitals’ David Warner plays a shot during the IPL match against the Kolkata Knight Riders. Picture: AFP.

All those confident assertions that David Warner is finished seem a little less certain after the veteran Australian opener posted his fourth half century in the IPL in the early hours of Friday morning.

One was to be expected. Two not unusual. Three was three, yeah, but the strike rate wasn’t anything special. Four, however, is something approaching a critical mass. That they come in a sample size of six innings gives further weight to the argument.

Yes it was in the IPL and no it wasn’t against Stuart Broad, the Dukes ball or on an English pitch, but you have to hand it to Warner. He has a habit of proving people wrong. His 103 Tests are themselves a refutation of the establishment’s confident assertions about the nature of his talent.

Warner, it was observed at first sighting, was a slugger, a player whose limited skills would limit him to the T20 format. Even NSW wouldn’t give him a first-class game back in the bad old days.

He forced his way into cricket’s consciousness through the shortest form but pitched his tent for the longest time at the top of the order in the five-day game.

Players with more classic pedigrees came and went, but the left hander remained and remains.

All anxieties around Australia’s 17 man squad for this year’s Ashes are based on the assumption that his wick is burning out, the conviction that English conditions confound him.

Few if any expect him to make it through to the last match at The Oval. Quite a few believe he shouldn’t make the first.

In the summer Ricky Ponting argued that you never write off a champion, but even his Delhi coach started to wonder if it was time as runs continued to evade the opener.

“It’s happened to all of us, it happened to me,” he said recently. “When you get to a certain age and it looks like your form is dropping off slightly, then the knives are sharpened and it doesn’t take long,” he said.

Ponting suggested Warner had missed a trick by not retiring after the 200 in his 100th Test at the MCG in December, but conceded “he’s a driven little man, a pretty stubborn little bugger, so we’ll see how he goes”.

Ponting and the stubborn little bugger shared an emotional embrace after Warner’s fourth half century in six innings pushed Delhi to its first win of the tournament.

The one constant in criticism of Warner ahead of these Ashes is the assertion he cannot bat in England. The fact he averaged 9.5 in the last Ashes and has never scored a century in those parts give credence to that assertion, but if Warner 2023 can replicate Warner 2015 then the visitors will be well on their way to pulling off the first Ashes victory in England for two decades.

In that series, people forget, he scored five half centuries and averaged 46.44. Something approaching that would have the side well on the way to the sort of totals they crave.

Australia’s top order looks in good shape. While significant contributions are expected from Usman Khawaja, Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne if Cameron Green can continue the way he left off it is hard to see Australia losing. Green is critical and coming into his own after 20 Tests. He scored his first century in the last game against India, he is averaging 37.6 with the bat and 34.3 with the ball.

Fine cricketer and fellow that he is, Mitch Marsh selection in the 17 man Ashes and World Test Championship squad is a tribute to Green and one which George Bailey says followed a Joni Mitchell moment in India. Australia was only knew what it had when it was gone. Or unavailable.

Green’s absence from the first two Tests of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, Bailey said, confirmed just how important he is to the set up. Green is, as you may have heard, Australian cricket’s Golden Calf. The almost mythical all-rounder, one who could bowl as well as he batted and one who batted well enough to hold his place in the top six.

It’s a tough gig. Ask Shane Watson or Marsh who both did their best to hold it down in recent decades. It’s a critical one too: behold the influence of Andrew Flintoff in 2005 and Ben Stokes in times since. The vast majority of the Australian squad is over 30 and the rest are close enough to touch it, but Green at 23 is an exception.

In The Times this week Michael Atherton wondered whether “with 10 players the wrong side of 30, does the profile of the squad suggest experience or age” but it is the inexperienced who tease ahead of the contest.

Australia has Green and England has the extraordinary Harry Brook, a young batsman who it appears to embody the ethos of this B-ball game that has England cricket fans in ecstasy. The exited isle hasn’t felt so good about itself since Oasis topped the charts and Tony Blair the polls. For those of you who haven’t been paying attention B-ball is the fast and furious cricket England has discovered since coach Brendon McCullum and championed by all-rounder, captain and occasional slayer-of-Australians Stokes. The traditional foe has found an altogether untraditional approach to the traditional game going hell-for-leather at every opportunity and winning nine out of 10 matches in 2022.

In that period the team has scored at a run rate of 4.13, a velocity which eclipses the Australians 4.08 in 2003 but one that has been gained, like the Australians in that period, against limited opponents.

England’s performance in Pakistan shaded the Australians who’d ground out one parched win from 15 days of attritional cricket.

Pulling up at Rawalpindi in December England posted 4-506 from just 75 overs. Ben Duckett scored his hundred in 105 deliveries, fellow opener Zak Crawley got his in 96, first drop Ollie Pope took 90 and then No.5 Harry Brook brought his up in 80.

That last lad, Brook, he’s the one who’ll be vying for attention with Australia’s Green. Only 24, born in Keighley on the confluence of the rivers Worth and Aire, threatens to rewrite the reputation of Yorkshireman. David Warner on bikie speed he made his T20 debut in January 2022 for England and was so impressive they rushed him into the ODI and Test squads. Thoroughly modern, both the young ’uns are warming up for the Ashes with a stint in the IPL. As you do.