IP 2019 SRH vs KXIP: With added intelligence and game sense, Warner proves he is the greatest IPL batsman of all time

As the clamour for the final Playoff spots gets more fierce, every IPL game will have a lot riding on it in this phase of the season. Monday night at Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad was another one of those nights where winning and losing could have cost SRH or KXIP the season.

For Hyderabad, the stakes were even higher for two more reasons. It was their last home game of 2019, and it was the last game where David Warner was playing a part before leaving home to be with the Australian team in the run-up for World Cup.

Hyderabad still had their fate in their own hands this season. If they win all their games from here, they will qualify for the Playoffs without having to wait to see how other teams fare. Needless to say, they needed Warner to fire one last time and take them to safety.

Warner started in his usual aggressive style in the Powerplay. With Saha going berserk at the other end, his burden of carrying the team alone on his shoulders was slightly relaxed. Hyderabad raced to 77 for no loss at the end of six overs, the highest powerplay score for this season.

Saha departed in the 7th over to Murugan Ashwin. With the Ashwin spin twins bowling well in tandem, something clicked in Warner’s head and he effortlessly moved out from his usual aggressive mode and engaged into safety mode. The next few overs were all about consolidation. He migrated from bludgeoning the ball to nurdling and caressing it. The scoreboard was ticking but more importantly, Warner was still there to keep Hyderabad’s hopes afloat. At the end of the sixth over, Warner’s was on 37. At the end of the tenth over, Warner was on 47. That’s 10 runs in four overs for one of the most destructive batsmen in the world.

Warner is driven by sheer intensity. He plays an aggressive brand of cricket and gives it his everything out there in the field every time. But his intelligence and game sense is often underrated. He showed some of it when he captained the Sunrisers in 2016 en route their first title win. On Monday night, the Australian batsman knew that his team’s middle order has been suspect, and if he exposes them too soon, the team runs a risk of another batting collapse.

Once Warner was convinced he has a safe platform, he started going for his shots again and catapulted his score to 81, finally falling to the last ball of Ashwin’s spell in the 16th over as if to ensure that his teammates don’t have to fear the threat of Punjab’s main bowler. Williamson and Nabi provided a late surge and took Hyderabad to an imposing total of 212.

Hyderabad has struggled to bowl well as a unit this year, but the cushion of a 200+ total ensured that they were able to put pressure on the batsmen and pick wickets at regular intervals to never allow Punjab a sniff. The third seamer position has given them some headaches, but Sandeep nailing his variations in this game should continue to give him a nod above the misfiring Kaul for the rest of the season. Nabi also put on an impressive show especially with the bat and Hyderabad may also settle down on him for the remaining two games ahead of Shakib.

While talking about his effort at the post-match interview Warner talked about the value of staying in and how he has worked on his game to ensure he does what the team needs of him. “I think it just goes back to being still as a batsman. I get the tendency to moving around a bit if there have been a few dots. But I have worked hard over the last few months. Just put the bat down and tried to be the best man I can be, the best husband I can be and that’s worked for me”, inspiring words from the big-hitting Australian opener who has seen crushing lows in his life in the last year, but has pieced together his spirit and his game to come back even stronger than the batsman he used to be.

This season should also put an end to the debate over the greatest IPL batsman of all time. The honour well and truly lies with David Warner now. He missed the last season while serving a suspension from Cricket Australia, and there were question marks on how he can perform in his come back. But even in his comeback year, Warner scored nine half-centuries equalling his own tally from 2016. Only Virat Kohli has scored more 50s in a single season.

No one comes even close to Warner in terms of consistency in the IPL. He is a cut above the rest of the contenders with 44 fifties. Shikhar Dhawan is the next best with 37, Kohli has 36. But if you look deeper into the numbers, Warner’s dominance over his peers his even more staggering. He has played 29 fewer games than Dhawan and 49 fewer games than Kohli. His innings to fifties ratio is 2.86, Dhawan is at 4.16 and Kohli 4.64. In cricketing parlance, this level of domination over your generation can only be termed Bradmanesque. No wonder the Hyderabad fans adore him.