Image Credit- AP
Virat Kohli scored a six off Haris Rauf last year,
which is constantly praised by everyone. At the Chinnaswamy Stadium on Friday,
David Warner struck Rauf for a six that was equally astounding. But why even
compare?
This is how the Warner six unfurled, a word that was
carefully picked because the photo was an amazing feat of folding and
unfolding. Rauf batted at the stumps at 146.1 kph while angling the ball in
from around the wicket. It was the kind of ball that was challenging to hit in
the air in any direction and get underneath. Warner didn’t only strike it in
the air; he also caused it to crash against the stand’s ceiling at backward
square leg.
Later in Warner’s innings, when he was in his 90s,
there was another inventive knee-folding event. This was bowled by left-arm
spinner Mohammad Nawaz, so it lacked the element of physical peril that made the
six off Rauf so exciting, but it once again showed Warner’s mastery of length
manipulation. In this instance, the collapsed rear leg gave him the opportunity
to sweep-pull what would have otherwise been a thigh-high ball into the chest.
Warner had hit 97 runs in 79 balls at this point in
his at-bat. Mitchell Marsh was on 87 off 92 at the other end. Despite having
scored less runs in boundaries (60) than Marsh (66), Warner was moving along at
a noticeably faster rate.
Because of this, he is one of only three hitters with
a 45+ average and a 95+ strike rate to have scored more than 5000 runs in ODIs.
The other two are AB de Villiers and Quinton de Kock.
Warner’s ODI statistics put him in the category of
all-time great players, but unlike some others, his name doesn’t frequently
come up in discussions about who the greatest ODI player of all time is.
Warner’s absence from the GOAT discussion, however, is
primarily due to how little 50-over cricket he has participated in. Only the
154th ODI of a career that only begun 14 years ago was played on Friday at the
Chinnaswamy. In actuality, 14 batters have scored more runs than him since his
debut.
But whenever the world has focused on Warner, he has
consistently scored runs. He currently ranks seventh among World Cup run
scorers, not much behind either Virat Kohli in fourth place or Rohit Sharma in
fifth. Out of the 22 hitters with at least 1000 World Cup runs, only Rohit and
Sachin Tendulkar have more hundreds, and Warner has the third-best strike rate
and the fourth-best average.
These are, once again, the numbers of an all-time
great. In just about a month’s time, when he’s done with this World Cup and in
all likelihood his ODI career too, it’s likely they’ll look even more imposing.