Warner finds rare form ahead of final England assignment

Even before David Warner confirmed the current England sojourn as his final Test tour, the combative opener had flagged his plans to go down swinging.

At Australia's final formal training session at bucolic Beckenham in England's garden county of Kent, before their preparation for next week's World Test Championship final shifts to The Oval in London, Warner was a picture of studied industriousness during a couple of stints in the practice nets.

The first came shortly after he revealed plans to call time on his 12-year Test tenure after the three-match home series against Pakistan next summer, and it unfolded on a green-tinged centre wicket against formidable teammates Pat Cummins and Josh Hazlewood, each armed with brand new Dukes-brand balls.

The second began shortly before a break for lunch midway through Australia's six-hour practice run, by which time the sun was breaking through the morning's blanket cloud cover, and ended with a series of throw downs from assistant coach Michael Di Venuto on a bone dry, rock hard practice pitch.

Throughout both sessions, the left-hander stood solid in defence on both front and back foot, intently watched deliveries that carried inherent menace as they passed harmlessly by, and muscled anything marginally short over mid-wicket or extra cover.

Image Id: F8068A16B83845B4972CDA81B185A6DE Image Caption: Warner trains at Beckenham south of London on Saturday // Getty

It might have passed as perfunctory nets outing if not for the fact his practice partner – with the pair rotating through the striker's end every few deliveries – was Australia's pre-eminent batter Steve Smith, who found himself repeatedly battling to lay bat on the shiny dark-red ball.

While Smith cussed volubly with each mishit, as much at himself as the degree of difficulty posed by the bowlers, Warner danced and shimmied, shadow-batted and chit-chatted.

"How's it sounding off the bat?" he asked of nobody in particular, after a trademark punch-drive sent a ball skidding across the grass through forward point accompanied by a crack like a rifle report.

Warner had earlier evaluated the form he's found in the Beckenham nets since Australia's first outing at the county out-ground last Thursday as the best of his phenomenally productive international career.

"Here, I've actually been superb in terms of my feet are moving, my energy's been moving, and I've been up and about," said Warner, who believes the quick turnaround from last month's Indian Premier League T20 stint to a six-Test summer in England will help his game rather than hinder as many speculate.

"I've come off the IPL and, in that format, you have to look to score and I think that's held me in good stead for this (Test) preparation.

"I'm still looking to score.

"I think sometimes, when I've (transitioned) from a red ball in state cricket into a Test match series, I've gone out and looked to survive and sort of changed the characteristics of my batting.

"So I think that (intent) has held me in good stead at the moment, and I've been practicing probably better than I ever have in the nets."

As if the contrast between his and Smith's disparate batting experiences against their fellow New South Wales bowling pair didn't provide sufficient vindication of Warner's assessment, he received strong endorsement from a highly credentialled third party.

As a teammate since the duo's pre-teen days in Sydney's southeast junior competitions, and now Test opening partner, Usman Khawaja has seen a lot of Warner batting across two and a bit decades, in the training environment and from 22 yards away at the non-striker's end.

Image Id: 16C31C8068BE4344B727E053BC988D2F Image Caption: Warner and Khawaja during last year's Adelaide Test against the West Indies // Getty

And Khawaja is unequivocal in his view Warner is as well placed as he could be to correct the blip on his batting record caused by a forgettable 2019 Ashes campaign that yielded 95 runs at an average of 9.5 from 10 innings, seven of which were ended by Stuart Broad.

"Genuinely, this is the best I've seen Davey bat in the nets the last couple days, it's been awesome to watch," Khawaja told cricket.com.au.

"It's as simple as just the way he's moving; just the way he's striking the ball.

"I've played a lot of cricket with him, and I've batted at the other end to him throughout my career – Test cricket or at state level – and you can just tell when he's moving well.

"He's an aggressive player, he plays a lot of shots generally and you can see when that's happening.

"It would not surprise me if he comes out and scores a truckload of runs here, it's just what Davey can do.

"Every time his back is against the wall, it seems like that's when he scores runs.

"So it would not surprise me if he came out here and was the leading runs scorer in the series."

Much has been made of Warner's skinny returns when Australia last played Tests in England, and even more of the stranglehold Broad took upon the veteran opener – and his front pad, in particular – but Warner cites a couple of credible factors as mitigation.

The first is that no opening batter could claim to have met expectations in that bowler-dominated series, that was played using a version of the local Dukes ball especially ordered by England and Wales Cricket Board officials in the knowledge it would make life tougher for batters.

At the start of the 2019 UK county season, the ECB shifted to a version of the Dukes ball that featured a less-pronounced seam amid fears the first-class game was becoming too heavily weighted in favour of bowlers.

But a batch of 2018 balls were retained and earmarked for that summer's Ashes contest.

So sick of the sight of those relics did Warner become during his battle against Broad four years ago, when one found its way into his net today via a mishit from one of his teammates batting nearby, he picked it up, glanced at it and immediately launched it into oblivion yelling "that's a 2018 ball".

His distaste is corroborated by statistics that confirm the 2019 Ashes is one of only two multi-Test campaigns between the historic rivals played in England to have produced a solitary opening stand of 50-plus runs, and none that reached 100.

Image Id: 8E06B4DC2C134F509A72300EAA4B844F Image Caption: Broad dismissed Warner seven times during the 2019 Ashes series // Getty

The other outlier came in Australia's two-match tour of 1890 when John Lyons and Charles 'Terror' Turner's first-wicket stand of 66 for the visitors on day one of the opening Test at Lord's against W G Grace's men was that Test summer's benchmark.

Almost 130 years later, it was England pair Rory Burns and Joe Denly's second innings effort of 54 in the final Test at The Oval that prevented an historic low point among Ashes openers.

Warner's other observation about the leanest series batting average of his Test career to that point – subsequently pipped by the 8.66 he averaged in India earlier this year, before being forced home early with injury after two matches – was the batting instructions under which he was operating.

"It was difficult, and there was nothing to do with any of my technique or anything like that," Warner said prior to Saturday's training session.

"If I am critical of myself, it was probably for going away from my game plan, which is looking to score.

"I was listening to some other voices which, from my perspective, didn't suit my game.

"So I gave that a chance, but I felt like I batted my best at Leeds (scoring 61 in difficult day one batting conditions in the third Test of 2019) and that was the way I normally played.

"I'm happy to nick off playing a cover drive rather than a front foot defence.

"From an opening batter's perspective, it's going to be challenging with the new ball to do that.

"But you have to be brave, and I think in these conditions with world-class bowlers, you can't allow them to settle and you can't allow them to put the ball in that one spot.

"So you're going to have to make some brave decisions and be content with getting out, if it's a cover drive or whatever."

Another element of his trusted batting blueprint Warner will avowedly not change is his training regime heading into the WTC Final against India starting on Wednesday, and then the start of the five-match Ashes series barely a week later.

Despite discovering the best practice nets form of his career in recent days, the man who cheerfully concedes "I'm one of the worst netters going around" isn't about to risk leaving that good touch on the training ground.

As such, he will likely partake of one final, fleeting hit at The Oval next Monday before sitting out his team's match-eve training run and trusting his preparation to date as sufficient to erase the bitter memories of 2019.

"On the fifth (Monday) we have another main day and I'll taper off there, and I won't train on the sixth," Warner said.

"So I'll do a bulk of my work beforehand, and then relax."

In the twilight of his playing days, as has been the case since he blazed on to the scene as a T20 bludgeoner in 2009, David Warner is doing it his way.

2023 Qantas Tour of the UK

World Test Championship Final: Wednesday June 7-Sunday June 11, The Oval

First Test: Friday June 16-Tuesday June 20, Edgbaston

Second Test: Wednesday June 28-Sunday July 2, Lord’s

Third Test: Thursday July 6-Monday July 10, Headingley

Fourth Test: Wednesday July 19-Sunday July 23, Old Trafford

Fifth Test: Thursday July 27-Monday 31, The Oval

Australia squad: Pat Cummins (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey (wk), Cameron Green, Marcus Harris, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Josh Inglis (wk), Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitch Marsh, Todd Murphy, Matthew Renshaw, Steve Smith (vc), Mitchell Starc, David Warner