Warner v Broad: enforcer has nowhere to hide as tables turn

David Warner walks off after being dismissed by Stuart Broad on Saturday.

No game dwells more on disappointment than cricket. There is the droop of a confounded bowler’s shoulders, the shame of the errant fielder. Above all, every wicket offers a study in the acceptance of batting defeat. It can speak volumes. Exhibit A: David Warner lbw Broad 0 at Old Trafford.

Anyone can get a duck. Anyone, therefore, can get a pair. But it is decidedly out of the ordinary for a batsman, in doing so, to suffer three consecutive noughts. As Maris Erasmus’s finger rose, Warner cast a skyward glance, not perhaps because he could hardly believe his luck but because he could. That would be right, wouldn’t it? The cricket gods, eh? They kill us for their sport. He brushed past his partner Marcus Harris: there would be no review. He ignored the steady cameraman’s surveillances: there would be no complaint.

Warner is hardly alone in his top order travails this summer. High quality pace bowling with Dukes balls has made opening the batting in these Ashes as dangerous an occupation as steeplejacking or deep-sea diving. From thirty-two starts, only six innings have gone past 20. Openers have been the canaries in a coalmine full of gas.

Some of this is explained by England’s curious partiality to pressing non-specialists into the task. Jason Roy and Joe Denly have made unconvincing draftees. Yet the waning of David Warner is very nearly as remarkable as the waxing of Steve Smith - perhaps even more so, as Smith had a pre-existing history of big scores, and Warner has never known batting times as tough as these.

Before this series, Warner v Broad had been a catchweight contest, the batsman averaging 64. This summer the weights have been thrown into reverse, Broad dismissing Warner six times in 93 deliveries for 32 runs, winnowing the batsman’s series average away to less than 10.

No particular subtleties or secrets have been involved. The strategy has been plain as day. Bowling fuller lengths from round the wicket, Broad has threatened the stumps, challenged both edges, and succeeded beyond his fondest imaginings.

Warner, maker of twenty-one Test hundreds, has now been dismissed by four of the last eleven Test deliveries he has faced without the addition of a run. This nought was as expressive as any.

With Australia 196 runs to the good, the situation was set up for Warner, for whom third-innings runs, burnishing an Australian advantage, have always been something of a speciality. The pitch was inviting. The sun was out. The assignment, quick runs, was made to the batsman’s measure.

Warner, in fact, was eager for the contest, or at least was eager to seem eager, arriving in the middle with Harris while the roller was still in action, heading for the striker’s end while England were still in their huddle. Warner’s partiality to number two has become enough of a thing that those instants he assumes the mantle of number one have grown noteworthy.

At peak times, Warner on the cricket field has an aura, and knows it. Here he seemed to be clutching it about himself. He would tackle his tormentor mano e mano, and may the best mano win. He let his first ball go decisively, as he had failed to do so in the first innings; this time, came the implicit promise, it would be different.

Instead came the chronicle of a dismissal foretold. From an effective shorter delivery, Warner jerked his head back, removing his gloves just in time. The next ball, fuller and from wide of the crease, kept on coming rather than shaping away, pummelling Warner’s back pad as it kept low. When Warner held up a hand to caution against a leg bye, it looked almost like he wished to forestall the appeal. There was nothing for it, in any sense.

It is a fascinating business when a skilful bowler gains a prolonged ascendancy over a skilful batsman. In this age of two-Test series, there is actually hardly time for hoodoos.

But the Ashes is different, qualitatively and quantitatively. Over a full-dress five-Test series, ascendancies have the freedom to fluctuate. Smith v Jofra Archer, Patrick Cummins v Rory Burns, and Ben Stokes v Nathan Lyon have been head-to-heads in the best tradition. When duels then start trending one way, there is no hiding.

What enriches Warner v Broad is not just the sudden and total change in its complexion, but the characters each have played in the knock-em-down-drag-em-out Ashes of the last decade. They have been the enforcers, the villains, the competitors it has been most satisfying for rivals to get the better of, the figures it has been most fun for rival fans to jeer. Perhaps that has been an underlying element - that for such an alpha batsmale as Warner, the role of quarry has been too unfamiliar to adapt to, too difficult to stomach.

Warner’s eclipse has left his confederate Smith to do double duty, of which, of course, he has proved more than capable. Yesterday he was at it again, a performance it is almost superfluous to describe, so extensive have been the resources dedicated to this task recently. At any rate, his 82 from 92 deliveries was as timely as it was inevitable, expediting the declaration just as England’s delaying action was showing signs of success.

As the shadows lengthened over Old Trafford, after another blink-and-miss-it English opening partnership, Cummins hit the outside of the top of Root’s off stump, inflicting on England’s captain a third nought in the series. Root heard the noise, held his pose, moved a step, looked behind him with a mix of regret and curiosity, and turned grimly for the pavilion. Exhibit B.