Of all the moments and milestones for David Warner on returning to the Australian team – first visit, first practice game, first international, first time up against England – the one with the most significance ended up buried at the back end of the World Cup group stage.
It didn’t have to be that way. Australia taking on South Africa on the final day could have been a marquee match deciding a semi-final spot. Instead it ended up being between the team that was first to lock in their spot and a team that was all but knocked out of the comp in the first week.
But this last match was still Warner taking on South Africa, the team against whom his exile from international cricket had begun. More specifically it was Australia’s opening batsman versus the fast bowler Kagiso Rabada, the match-up that had created so much friction in the ill-fated 2018 Test series that saw Warner banned for a year.
In that series the pair were after each other throughout. When Warner had a scuffle with South African wicketkeeper Quinton de Kock in a stairwell at the Durban ground, the leaked security footage showed Rabada remaining on the landing after Warner had been hustled away, glaring in his departing direction with the kind of stare that could have burned through stone.
When Warner had another departure in the Port Elizabeth Test, it came after Rabada had given him a working over, targeting his body before taking his stumps. Rabada received an ICC sanction for shouting at the batsman, while already facing an unresolved charge for shouldering Australia’s then-captain Steve Smith in the first innings.
And when Rabada appealed the Smith charge to be cleared to play in the third Test in Cape Town, Warner went after him all guns blazing. After five balls where Warner was hit hard on the arm and then edged past his stumps, he smashed five boundaries in a row from Rabada, including an audacious flip-pull for six. The sixth ball in the sequence cost him his stumps.
It was the second day of a Test match and Warner had made 30 off 14 balls, which his batting partner Cameron Bancroft claimed did not represent any particular desire to take Rabada down. “I wouldn’t say Dave did anything out of the ordinary to attack him or anything like that, I think he just played his natural way and at the end of the day he got a pretty good ball to get him out.” As it turned out, Bancroft wasn’t always the best at summing up a situation, as the following day he became collateral damage when Warner’s animosity spilled over into ball-tampering.
So in this year’s World Cup match at Old Trafford, their meeting was one to anticipate. They didn’t face off immediately; South Africa’s leg-spinner Imran Tahir opened the bowling in an attempt to confuse Australia’s aggressive openers. There was certainly confusion as Warner should have been run out in the first over, only for the ball to be returned to the wrong end. The fielder? Rabada.
That at least gave him the pleasure of bowling at Warner in the second over, and immediately beating him with a beauty past the outside edge. A seriously fast short ball cut Warner in half, then another short one crashed into the splice.
In the subsequent over it was counter-punch time, with Warner lofting over cover with the fielding restrictions in play. Four runs. Warner blocked the next, then was fried by a ball that screamed through and nearly nicked him off again, followed by a bouncer that had him leaping. Warner replied in the next over with a pull for six, then after several more survival shots, a top edge fine for four.
It was compelling, end to end stuff. And by the end of it Warner was still there, with half of Rabada’s allotted overs gone. He was still there on 66 when Rabada came back in the 23rd over. Glenn Maxwell did Australia the favour of soaking up one Rabada over, avoiding the risk of Warner trying something too expansive, but that cost Maxwell his wicket instead in Rabada’s seventh.
With Faf du Plessis hoarding his strike bowler’s last three overs, Warner went on, and on. Chasing 326 he didn’t have much choice. With four wickets down and one retired hurt he had even less choice. This seemed to galvanise Warner, who has pottered and scratched around at times through this World Cup even while piling up an unreasonable number of runs.
This time there was none of that. He was clean, he was sure, he was confident. And in Alex Carey he found an ally who was the same, helping him pile up 108 runs in fast time. They had to take the bowling on and they did.
It took a brilliant catch to end Warner’s day on 122, from Chris Morris who has been all heart throughout South Africa’s at times half-hearted campaign. Morris then had Carey caught for 85 from 69 balls, with Australia 50 runs from safety.
That’s when Rabada returned, the clean-up operator to run through the big-hitting Mitchell Starc and end the contest. He hadn’t dismissed Warner, but he had prevailed. The two shared a brief handshake at the boundary edge, and that was it for this round. Next time they come up against one another, you can be sure it will be box office again.
