The journey from dressing rooms at Old Trafford down to the outfield involves a set of clanking metal stairs for those in spikes and every day, almost without fail, there have been England supporters in the stand alongside it welcoming David Warner with reminders of last year’s ball-tampering scandal.
The opener has begun to respond to these now seriously tedious taunts, whooping in the direction of his tormentors with arms aloft and a smile on his face. Warner could not care less about his panto villain status, such that he and Steve Smith are known to be eyeing a return next summer as part of the new 100-ball jamboree.
Out in the middle on day four, however, the grin from Warner was a more rueful one. Before Smith and Matthew Wade twisted the knife in Australia’s second innings, pushing their lead into miracle-required territory, there was a brief flicker of English hope kickstarted by Stuart Broad inflicting Warner’s first pair in Test cricket and his third duck in a row.
Broad, as is so often the case, was off celebrating without deigning to offer an appeal to Marais Erasmus. The sixth ball of his opening over had been sent down with a scrambled seam, allowing it to skid off the top of this wearing, grassless pitch and pin the left-hander plumb in front.
Warner has done some remarkable things in the longest format. There have been 21 hundreds. One of them was the rare beast that is a century before lunch – a 78-ball blitz against Pakistan at the Sydney Cricket Ground – while three times he has passed three-figures in both innings.
But this summer, after a bumper return in the World Cup, Warner has been kept down by Broad. In eight innings the right-armer has had his number six times. Only once has Warner made it past double figures and in that instance, the gritty 61 on the opening day at Headingley, it involved several heavy slices of fortune with ball doing too much under leaden skies.
For the wags on social media, this running one-sided battle has been manna from heaven. There has been a string of recycled jokes about Warner falling out of Broad’s pockets at the end of the day, along with the car keys and the wallet and more references to bunnies than a copy of Watership Down.
But beyond all this twaddle, how has it been achieved? How has Broad left Warner, the first opener on the teamsheet when drawing up a composite side before the series, fretting over his spot before Thursday’s fifth Test at the Oval?
The chat before this match was that Smith is one of cricket’s best problem-solvers but the same also applies to Broad. Before the first Test he sat down to ponder where he had previously been falling short against Warner; why, in 18 previous encounters, he had removed him five times at 65 runs apiece. The conclusion? The left-hander’s outside edge had become too great an obsession.
By solely trying to bring the slips into play, Broad realised he had been feeding Warner’s strengths, such that any width or drop in length was allowing those Popeye forearms to crash the ball through the covers or cleave it through midwicket. On Australian pitches in particular, where the bounce is true and the sideways movement fleeting, it was one-way traffic.
But with the Duke ball in England he deduced that if he could target the stumps more from around the wicket and looked to bring the ball back into off stump off the seam from a fuller length, he would increase the possible modes of dismissal and reduce the scoring options. If it jags in, lbw and bowled are on; hold its line and the catchers behind the wicket would still be in the game.
The former has mainly been at play. Of the six times Broad has dismissed Warner, three have been leg-before and one bowled (that bail-trimming beauty at Lord’s). The other two show the funk he has been experiencing, with feathered edges behind from a dangled bat while trying to leave.
It means Warner has drawn level with his old captain Michael Clarke as the batsman Broad has removed most times in Test cricket. Eleven is the magic number and it could well lead to Warner finishing the series as Australia’s 12th man.
