Six Test centuries in 2014, including hundreds in both innings of a Test on two occasions and the second Australian batsman after Donald Bradman to do so against India – Such has been David Warner’s recent run of form that his name could well be David Bradman.
After scoring a swashbuckling 145 (163 balls) in the first innings of the Adelaide Test, Warner made a more sedate 102 (166 balls) in the second, to put the match strongly in Australia’s grasp with a day to go.
No wonder then that the Australian opener feels like he is in the batting paradise. "I think this is the best form of my life,” he said. “I want to keep doing my job for the team and that is to score runs at the top. I would like to get big hundreds going forward and convert these hundreds to double hundreds like Michael Clarke did last time against India. That is the next goal. They are the achievements you want and they get recognised a lot."
This Test has been filled with emotions with every Australian player paying his tribute to Phillip Hughes in his own way every time he achieves a milestone. Warner has had many of those moments in the last four days. The last came when he reached the triple figures on Friday and replicated Hughes’ achievement of scoring centuries in both innings of a Test, a feat he attained against South Africa in 2009.
That fact was not lost on Warner as he approached the milestone. "Yeah definitely, it was in the back of my mind as well. I have been seeing highlights of his back-to-back hundreds over the last week or so,” he said. “Probably that gave me some luck out there today. It was a memorable thing to do. Phil had played fantastic knocks in South Africa."
It didn’t look like that when Warner was batting, but the left-hander said the pitch has become tougher to bat on as the game has progressed. He was confident that Nathan Lyon will do an encore of his first innings performance which gave him a five-wicket haul.
"At the moment it's hard to score when the ball gets older. But there is a nice rough area for Nathan Lyon to exploit tomorrow," he said.
"We saw that in first innings he pretty much hit it with every delivery. Tomorrow, we will try to take wickets with the new ball and once it gets older, we will try and use the conditions to reverse the ball.”
Warner was glowing in his praise for the off-spinner. "We have seen how much he has evolved in the last couple years. Now he has a fiver in first innings of a home Test. There is no reason why he can't come out tomorrow with his tail up and help us take 10 wickets.
"The pitch has changed and there are nearly 98 overs, there will be at least 10 chances for us to do that. When we went out to bat, we were only ahead by 70-odd runs and we had 70-80 overs remaining in the day. We batted normally first to set up the game and later Steve Smith and Mitchell Marsh came and hit the ball out of the park,” he said.
While Warner’s knock was brilliant, he also had his fair share of luck. When on 66, Varun Aaron bowled him out off a no-ball, on 70 a caught behind decision went in his favour when replays showed he had gloved one to the keeper and when on 89, M Vijay put him down at gully.
The first of them created quite a furor as it induced a tense period of on-field altercation between the two teams. It started with the bowler and the batsman and then various other players got involved before the umpires and Virat Kohli calmed things down. Warner said it was a part of the game.
"The temperature in the middle got up to 40-degree-plus, so maybe it got to some people. It happens in cricket when decisions don't go your way and you get bowled off a no-ball. They will come at you. Sometimes you give it back, sometimes you take it silently.
"It is just how cricket is played. When things don't go your way, you get full of adrenaline. Aaron bowling that no-ball and nearly getting me out, he came at me. And I had a go at him too. Everyone knows I like to get involved and get verbal. But maybe I shouldn't have done that. It was a bit of a contest and it is like a roller-coaster ride. You just ride it," he said.
These fiery incidents on the field were a stark contrast from the Australians’ reaction when Virat was hit by a Mitchell Johnson bouncer in the first innings. Warner said it was all about deciding what the right thing to do is at a given moment.
"Given the incidents of the last week and a half, it is quite tough when someone gets hit in the head. You sit back and hope he is okay. We play cricket in the spirit of the game. But when we play tough, we play tough. That's only verbal though. But when someone gets hurt, you have to give him sympathy.”
