Kolkata: It was around 6am Monday morning on May 30, 2016 and David Warner was about to leave the hotel for the airport in Bengaluru. He had a 10am flight for New York where he was to meet wife Candice and two daughters Ivy and Indi after a month and a half. Soon after was he in the car did he call to say: “It has not sunk in yet you know. That we could beat Bangalore in Bangalore and win the IPL seems surreal. They are a great team. I feel overwhelmed. Everyone was ready to give it their all. We are IPL Champions.”
Words were just flowing like the way the runs did over the last couple of months.
Things are a little different now. Not the best India series by his very high standards, Warner is aware of the challenge at hand. Can he do it one more time for Hyderabad and can he yet again lead form the front and set an example for the likes of Dhawan, Williamson, Yuvraj and the others?
“The Test series will have no bearing on the IPL,” he said. “I definitely wish I had scored a few more runs in the series but that’s now past. While I did not get many runs I was never short of putting in the hard yards. At the nets I felt good and I am aware that hard work is the only recipe to get back on track. It has happened to the best and it has happened to me but not once did I not feel good about batting.”
Warner is one who knows both success and failure equally well. Down and out after the Joe Root punchgate controversy in Birmingham, Warner was on the cusp of giving it all up and going away. “The question was should I leave as cricket’s bad boy or should I try and do everything I could to make a comeback and play for my country for another 10 years”, he said. He chose the latter option and the rest is history.
Marriage and his two kids have made a huge difference. Warner now knows what taking responsibility is all about and Australian vice captaincy has set him up for more. Most importantly, he has the 2016 fairytale to fall back on.
In fact, the situation is somewhat similar for him in 2017 like it was in 2016. Winning the World Cup in 2015 and playing some excellent Test cricket, Warner, everyone expected would turn out to be Australia’s go to man in the world T-20 in India in March 2016. And he himself was mighty confident on the eve of the World Cup and felt rather depressed having failed to deliver for his team. He was determined to make amends in the IPL and Sunrisers Hyderabad was the beneficiary. Leading a mediocre team in the absence of Yuvraj Singh and Ashish Nehra, Warner’s Sunrisers started poorly. But thanks to his heroics and timely support from Yuvraj, Ben Cutting, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Mustafizur Rehman, Sunrisers pipped Virat Kohli’s RCB in a high octane final to emerge champions.
Batting like a man possessed Warner, it must be said, led by example. A brilliant 69 in the final to set the tone, Sunrisers managed to score 208, which, despite Gayle and Virat’s heroics RCB were unable to chase down. And in victory, Warner showed his evolution. It was never him, it was always ‘we the team’.
As SRH gets ready for a rematch of last year’s final on April 5 on home turf, David Warner is silently confident. He knows he can turn it around yet again. He knows he is just one innings away and that might well be round the corner.