Don’t poke the bear: Champ’s response to Sunrisers snub

{ AARON FINCH } AUSTRALIA CAPTAIN I can’t believe people wrote Warner off. When he’s got his back against the wall, that’s when you get his best.

DUBAI: Like a good captain, Aaron Finch knew—or at least he claims he did—David Warner would end the World Cup as player of the tournament.

A few months back—Finch said at the press conference after the Cup was won—he had called coach Justin Langer to tell him “don’t worry about Davy…he’ll be man of the tournament...”

“I can’t believe people wrote him off,” Finch added. “It was like poking the bear.”

Poking a bear indeed. What Finch was referring to was Warner’s tribulations with his IPL team Sunrisers Hyderabad, where, this season, he was removed from captaincy, then dropped from the team, and finally, during the UAE leg of the tournament last month, told to stay back in his hotel room instead of joining the team in the dugout.

If Sunrisers Hyderabad were to be believed—and with Trevor Bayliss, Tom Moody, VVS Laxman and Muttiah Muralitharan on their coaching roster, there’s not much reason to doubt them—Warner, 35, was a spent force.

It did not look good for the opener, or for Australia with the World Cup just a few weeks away at the same venue.

Except Warner did not buy it.

“I actually think people talking about my form is quite funny,” he told reporters at that time.

“I laugh at the matter because at the end of the day I’ve played hardly any cricket.”

He had been dropped from the team after just two matches in UAE and he had a sneaking feeling that something else was up when he was told not to come to the ground.

“Not being able to go there, run drinks and be around was when it sort of hit home that it could be personal, and I’m still yet to get those answers,” he said later.

And then he brushed it all off. The bear had been poked and the bear was now ready to fight back. That fight took Australia all the way to their first men’s World T20 title.

“Out of form, too old and slow… congratulations!” tweeted Warner’s wife Candice when Australia lifted the trophy, a little wink at Hyderabad.

With 289 runs in the World Cup at a strike rate of 146.70, he was the biggest impact batter in the top-order, the second leading run-scorer, one to strike the most fours and fourth most sixes.

Knocks of 65 (42) against SL, 89 (56) against West Indies, 49 (30) in the semis and 53 (38) in the final were all central to Australia’s wins. En route, he stirred up yet another “spirit of cricket” controversy when he hit, for a six, a ball that slipped out of the bowler’s hands and bounced twice before reaching him in the semi-final (perfectly legal).

In the same match, he also walked after a caught-behind appeal, even though replays showed that he had clearly not made contact with the ball.

With Warner around, there’s always something happening, always action.

“He’s a fighter. When he’s got his back against the wall, that’s when you get the very best of David Warner,” Finch said.

We’ve seen it before of course.

Warner and then captain Steve Smith were singled out in 2018 as the masterminds of the “sandpapergate” incident. Soon after, back in Australia and with his wife standing by, Warner had choked on tears as he faced the press for a long and hard apology.

“I’m gonna look at who I am as a man.” He had thought himself then that his career had ended.

“I suppose there is a tiny ray of hope that I may one day be given the privilege of playing for my country again but I’m resigned to the fact that that may never happen…”

But it did, and when Warner came back from his year-long ban, he promptly went on a run spree, amassing 647 runs at the 2019 ODI World Cup, just one short of the tournament’s highest run getter, Rohit Sharma.

The treatment by SRH in the IPL would have hurt of course, but watch out for the next IPL auction.

The bear is back.