Tribute to a man who’s the undiminishing enigma of the IPL – David Warner

by Devdeep Tyagi April 11, 2023 · Caught At Point / Delhi Capitals

A tribute to a man - David Warner Delhi Capitals

David Warner: Implicit in the Dave Warner success in the IPL and heck it is success whose caravan began in May 2009, is consistency.

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Few cricketers are as polarising as they are talented as Australia’s David Warner.

You may not be a massive fan of his, but would you shove his talent and records under the carpet?

In exactly the space of a single contest, you can both rate and berate David Warner. You can both shower tons of adulation at the man as also be done, absolutely done by his chirping.

Not a character who believes in being on the backfoot, except when he plays some incredible punches or the pushes towards square of the wicket, David Warner isn’t done yet.

He’ll come hard at his opponents, he will give back at every given opportunity to let his competitors know that he is here to supersede them, whether with the bat or by simply the weight of runs.

He is doing that even as on date, even though his team is desperate for much success in this edition of the Indian Premier League.

Truth be told, even those greats such as Sehwag can say all they want such as, “Either draw a leaf out of guys like Yashasvi Jaiswal or don’t come to the IPL at all!”

But it doesn’t quite change the truth that David Warner’s current IPL franchise would look absolutely hollow and half its weight in the absence of its flamboyant leader.

How?

Well, look nowhere else but at the sheer weight of runs?

David Warner’s name now sights right next to a bludgeoning tally of 6,000 IPL runs.

These aren’t just lots of runs; these are runs in that famous T20 franchise league that has easily given the franchise in David Warner’s own country a run for its money and some unsparing competition in TRP’s.

6,000 runs in any format of the game is quite an achievement. But then to have these many burgeoning runs in Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni, Rohit Sharma land is an achievement about as extraordinary by today’s standards as the Universe Boss Chris Gayle’s twin triple hundreds in Test cricket.

It’s one thing to score in an IPL match or maybe one or two editions, but it’s something quite incredible to have notched up no fewer than 6,000 runs in that same league where the only other two Indians to have done so are Virat Kohli and Shikhar Dhawan.

It’s the typical sight where you can’t help but yell, “Aussie… Aussie.. Aussie!”

Truth be told, regardless of what might the critics be saying at this time, to be still scoring runs when there is no Steven Smith, where Mitch Marsh is departing for a week long break, leaves Warner as being the David who is rubbing his shoulders against the Goliath.

Implicit in the Dave Warner success in the IPL and heck it is success whose caravan began in May 2009, is consistency.

Sheer consistency!

Throughout the IPL, David Warner has harassed some world class names such as Pollard, Starc, Bumrah, Malinga, Jadeja and Bravo, made fans, earned dollops of money, become the mainstay of the Sunrisers and has only now shifted his base to Delhi in a bid to renew his stature as an IPL great.

That’s a lot of work and a darn fine achievement in a testing format of the game where reputations are made and careers break after every single edition.

Surely, the kind of knocks that the famous left hander is playing at the moment are perhaps too sluggish for his own good. Surely, as a captain he is nowhere close to lifting the spirits of a team that really must rally behind the main man to change their fortunes for surely, no one cricketing talent ever changed the destinies for his unit single handedly every single time.

Dhoni hasn’t done it. Kohli, for all that god given batting greatness, hasn’t yet turned it around for the RCB. But Dave Warner is out there, sweating, slogging and trying. And it ought to be asked that while we are all fine in being slightly critical of his approach insofar, is it fair to say that he is not even trying?