Virender Sehwag and David Warner played together for the Delhi Daredevils franchise of the Indian Premier League in 2011. If you asked most serious observers of the Test match game at the time, this was a meeting between a one-off genius and a Twenty20 specialist. At the time, Warner had not played the first-class game. After watching Warner play in the nets, Sehwag observed that the Australian would do better in Test cricket than he would in T20s. As Warner revealed later, Sehwag’s argument was that Warner’s tendency to compulsively look for runs would yield results in Test cricket as long as he stayed focused on his scoring zones, since more fielders tended to be around the bat.
Sehwag had turned conventional wisdom about opening the batting in Test cricket on its head during his breathtaking tenure as India’s Test opener. He was widely regarded as being a one-off genius. Conventionally, Test openers were supposed to face up to the opposition’s best bowlers with the brand new ball and “take the shine off it”. Their primary job was to lay the groundwork so that the middle-order run-making engine could build the team’s total against the older ball. In India, it is often more difficult to start against the older ball than it is to do so against the new one. This peculiarity, coupled with Sehwag’s genius, produced nearly 9,000 Test runs at an average of nearly 50 and a strike-rate of 83 runs per 100 balls for India.
David Warner’s success using the Sehwagian approach is akin to a replication study that confirms a significant scientific discovery. That Sehwag himself predicted Warner’s success lends further credence to this view. Warner is proving that Sehwag was not a one-off outlier, but was the pioneer of an alternative approach to opening the batting in Test cricket. Exceptional stroke-making ability, relentless focus on scoring runs and the tremendous discipline which is the hallmark of all elite Test players combine to show that it is possible to be an attacking opening batsman in Tests.
Limits to their approach
There are limits to this approach though. Sehwag’s average Test innings as an opener was 50 in 60 balls. David Warner’s average Test score is 50 in 64 balls. This frenetic rate of scoring means that Warner and Sehwag are likely to reach big scores rapidly, like the Australian did in Sydney recently. But it also means that they often fail. Part of the reason for Sehwag or Warner’s high batting average is this ability to produce big scores. Where a more normal batsman would reach 80, they reach 120. Where a normal batsman would score 150, they reach 225. Fourteen of Sehwag’s 22 Test hundreds were in excess of 150, six in excess of 200. Warner has already made 18 Test hundreds in 60 Tests and has a best of 253. This propensity to make big scores makes up for their above average rate of failure.
England’s Alastair Cook is the perfect example of the conventional approach. Cook’s average Test innings is 47 in 98 balls. On average, opponents require 38 balls more to dismiss Cook than Sehwag and 34 more than are required to dismiss Warner. Over two innings of a Test match, that comes to 12 extra overs. That’s 12 extra overs for another batsman to accumulate runs at the other end. Cook has been dismissed for less than 50 in a Test match in 61% of his 253 Test innings so far. In these innings, it has taken opponents 40 balls to dismiss him. Sehwag has been dismissed for less than 50 in 64% of his 180 Test innings. It took opponents, on average, 24 balls to dismiss him. For David Warner, the corresponding figures are 60% of 110 innings, and 26 balls. Sehwag or Warner fail about as often as Alastair Cook. When they do, it’s over quickly. Cook makes the opponents work for his wicket. In the process, he makes things easier for the batsmen to follow.
Great advantage
The great advantage of Sehwag and Warner is that when they are successful, they score so quickly that they leave their team with numerous options. For example, Sri Lanka made 393 in their first innings against India at the Cricket Club of India in December 2009. Yet, thanks to Sehwag’s incandescent 284 not out, they found themselves 50 runs behind in the first innings by the end of the second day. Warner made 143 in 156 and 135 in 152 in a match against South Africa at Cape Town. After India were bowled out for 161 in the first innings at Perth in 2012, Warner made 180, and was out in the 55th over. There was no chance for India in that Test match even though the other 10 Australian batsmen in that innings made only 189 between them. Warner had provided Australia with a lead of 108 in less than two sessions of batting.
Warner proves that Sehwag did not merely make runs, but invented a whole new approach to opening the batting in Test cricket. The classical school embodied so brilliantly by Alastair Cook will always remain, but before he’s finished, the Australian may well surpass his path-breaking Indian hero.