Former Australian captain Ian Chappell has praised Australian opening batsman David Warner for his aggressive style of play ahead of his final Test against Pakistan. The match is scheduled to begin on January 3 at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG).
David Warner made his Test debut in 2011 and has been a regular member of the team ever since. He started his farewell series with an excellent score of 164 in the first Test, which helped Australia win by a significant 360 runs. However, he had a relatively quiet second game against the Men In Green.
In an interview with World Wide Sports, Ian Chappell praised David Warner’s attacking approach at the top of the order, even when he was short of runs. He also dismissed the swashbuckling opener’s all-time ranking and preferred to focus on Warner’s lasting legacy.
“If you’re an opener, as soon as you fail once or twice, it’s always ‘mate, perhaps you should steady down a bit. Rankings are a load of bulls— in my opinion. Could the bloke play? Bloody oath he could play. Was he one of the better players? Sure. Where did he rank? Who knows and who cares.”
“Very few players – and when I say very few, in my memory in the Australian Test side – have had the skill and the guts to play aggressively against the new ball and succeed. I don’t think many people understand how courageous it is, because you will always get someone telling you how to play when you fail – it doesn’t matter where you bat,” Ian Chappell said.
There were concerns about Warner’s ability to perform in the longer format of the game early in his Test career. However, the left-handed opener proved everyone wrong by concluding his career as the highest-scoring Australia opener in history. He scored a critical century against Pakistan in the series opener in Perth.
When People Say He Could Be Finished, David Warner Comes Out And Makes Run – Ian Chappell
Ian Chappell believes that the entire ball-tampering scandal in Cape Town in 2018 turned many people against David Warner despite his contribution to the Australian team and hailed him for making a comeback and scoring runs for the team in all three formats of the game.
“The sandpaper incident in South Africa has coloured a lot of opinions and put a lot of people against David, but if anybody thinks that there were only three people involved in that sandpaper rubbish, then they believe in the Easter Bunny and Father Christmas.”
“David, like all of us, has made mistakes, but he owns up to them. He’s continued to confound people when people say he could be finished, he comes out and makes runs,” Ian Chappell added.
David Warner will most likely miss the forthcoming white-ball series against the West Indies to compete in the T20I League. Following his retirement from red-ball cricket, the left-handed opener plans to play in T20 contests such as the Big Bash League and the International League T20 followed by the Indian Premier League.