5 min readApr 21, 2023 07:35 AM IST
First published on: Apr 21, 2023 at 07:35 AM IST
Prithvi Shaw has continued to fail. Sarfaraz Khan had had issues against the likes of Mark Wood and co. Yash Dhull and a few Indian talents have had issues against pace. David Warner seemed a bit miffed when the woes of a few Indian youngsters was put to him.
“We don’t really have too many discussions because you have to back your skills and I can’t tell people how to bat. You have to actually work it out.
“If you are going to face bowling, guys who bowl at 150 kmph, you need to have the technique and method to score, and if they are going to keep coming at you and they bowl into your ribcage, you have to find a way to score.”
Warner said how it’s difficult to practice against the short balls in the training and also, how it can be counterproductive.
“In the nets, it’s very difficult to practice; even in Australia, we don’t practice the short-pitch balls. I feel if you practice the short ball all the time in the game, you would be tentative. It’s a reaction skill and you have to remember that the bowlers are going to bowl only one short ball in this format and that’s a good thing for the batsman,” Warner said.
On Thursday night, Warner found his hitting form, scoring 57 off 41 balls, including 11 fours, out of which 10 came inside the powerplay. There has been concern about his batting pace earlier in the season, with even his team-mate Axar Patel suggesting that “he is trying but it’s just not happening for him (Warner) … When wickets are falling from one end, it’s not good to try and keep attacking from the other end as well.”
Warner picked up that theme of falling wickets and blamed it for his batting in the season.
“There’s going to be a lot of critiques out there to suggest that I haven’t been batting the way I normally bat. But when you lose three wickets in a row in two overs and I have faced three balls what would you do? You can’t do anything. You have some sense of responsibility,” he said.
“In Bangalore, When I got out, and I guarantee you, people would have been criticising me for getting out but that’s just the game; that’s how it is.”
The Delhi Capitals captain struck his fourth half-century of the 2023 season, his quickest of the season in just 33 balls against Kolkata Knight Riders.
“Today I felt like my matchups were there, and I will take the powerplay on and we didn’t lose wickets in clumps in the first two overs. I felt like I have my rhythm back again, I had a good couple of net sessions. I felt like I was probably a bit tentative after losing wickets in the first couple of games but for me, it was about going there and playing the way I do and the way I know.”
The hosts did lose their way during the chase, with Kolkata spinners picking up six wickets after the halfway stage. Warner said after losing five games in a row, chasing a low total is hard to win.
“I think any total chasing 128 is quite a low total. There can be a little bit of, I wouldn’t say nerve but a bit scratchy. After losing five games on the trot, these games are hard to win,” he said.
“We lost wickets again, too many consecutive wickets, we have to try and work on that but little things can happen when you are chasing small totals.”
Warner lauded his bowlers but said the wicket was not as hard as the scores suggested.
“Our bowlers bowled absolutely amazing and were exceptional. I don’t think that was 130 wickets, that looked like probably 160 and 165 kind of wicket,” said Warner.
“It was a new ball wicket to score runs and once the ball got older, it held on the wicket. The faster bowlers at the break said, their knuckle balls and slower ones were holding up in the wicket. We knew that when they came up to bowl, they would bowl a lot of spin. Traditionally Narine and Chakravarthy bowl a lot faster but today, they slowed it a bit and that strangled our chase a bit,” he said.
David Warner 
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