The battle between opening batters and opening bowlers not only sets the tone for what is to follow but offers scope for psychological dominance, writes MIKE ATHERTON.
I’m not a memorabilia type of person. I have that bottle of champagne, as well as a small oil painting gifted by Jack Russell, of our stand in Johannesburg in 1995, and that’s it on show. I have other bits and bobs – medals, caps, touring blazers, pictures, mementos – but put away somewhere, unsighted and untouched for years. None of the stuff hidden away means very much, the past being the past. Some former players like to be surrounded by memories. Not me.
I don’t dwell, unless asked, or unless there is a spark for a column like this. But my mind was cast back briefly on Tuesday evening when we published an Ashes preview interview with Stuart Broad which touched on his enduring rivalry with David Warner. The joy Broad has clearly taken from that long-running contest shone through. Warner might have been eager to see the back of it after the 2019 series in England, when he averaged 9.5 and was dismissed seven times by Broad, but I suspect strongly that he feels the same way.
Stuart Broad has tormented David Warner in their recent battles. Picture: Gareth Copley/Getty Images
Both are 36 years old now but retain their fierce competitive instincts and are anticipating what will surely be their last Ashes series, and last duel. Only three bowlers in history have more Ashes wickets than Broad – Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Hugh Trumble – and among that number, Warner has contributed 14 times to the total. Broad has dismissed Michael Clarke 11 times and Steve Smith nine, but, for him, it has been the battle against Warner than has stood out.
Of the rivalry, Broad said: “We’ve had incredible battles. He had the better of me for quite a long period … ultimately the biggest praise I can give Davey is the fact that I had to completely study him and change my style of bowling because of the success he had against me. He’s someone I’ve really enjoyed playing against; he’s ferociously competitive and those sorts of characters bring out the best in me as well.”
There was no gloating here – wisely, since who knows what lies ahead – rather a reflection on the best of sporting rivalry: reciprocal respect and an acknowledgment that it has been a mutually beneficial contest. Warner forced Broad to change and improve, just as Broad’s more recent success will have encouraged Warner to do the same. That is how sport evolves.
Warner’s place for the Ashes was said to be in some doubt throughout the winter. He made a double hundred against South Africa in Melbourne (but not much else) which assuaged some doubts, but Australia, unusually, have picked a squad only for the World Test Championship (WTC) final and the first two Tests. Overnight, their head coach, Andrew McDonald, made some slightly more positive noises about Warner than previously, but Warner will know, as England do, that he is on notice.
David Warner had the better of Stuart Broad in their early battles. Picture: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images
We don’t tend to think of these intense individual rivalries in team sports. We see the Ashes as a contest between different countries with different styles of play and different systems, the destination of the urn acting as temporary validation for one over the other. We remember great rivalries that elevate individual sports more naturally.
Cricket’s unique flavour combines the individual and the collective. The essence of the game remains an individual contest between batsman and bowler, played out in the context of the requirements of the team. The most intense battle in that regard tends to come between opening batsmen and opening bowlers: it not only sets the tone for what is to follow but, especially in a five-match series, offers scope for psychological dominance because of the repetitive nature of it.
It is why a five-match Test series between two strong teams remains the gold standard by which players are judged and why the WTC has been such an irrelevance in its aim to reinvigorate the five-day game. By my count, the latest WTC cycle, the final of which starts at the Oval on June 7, has incorporated 18 two-Test series, twice as many as those scheduled over three Tests or more. Series lasting two Tests allow little scope for individual rivalries to germinate.
By Broad’s own admission, Warner had the better of things in the early years. So Broad had to study Warner’s game and develop his own. He recognised that Warner is much stronger when offered width outside the off stump, when he can thrash the ball through point, and is more limited through the leg side. Broad, therefore, tightened his line of attack and developed his expertise from round the wicket, the angle that caused Warner such problems in 2019.
David Warner had his game picked apart by Stuart Broad at the 2019 Ashes. Picture: Ryan Pierse/Getty Images
Now the boot is on the other foot. To watch Warner tinker during the 2019 series was to see a batsman being picked apart technically and psychologically. He tried batting outside the crease; he tried moving to off stump and then to leg stump. Nothing worked. Crucially, there was no respite, as there would have been in a two-Test series. Warner had to keep coming back for more until he was broken – and that forms a vital context to the next few months.
This psychological element is the most underappreciated aspect of Test cricket, largely because only those who have been through the mill know what it is truly like. Trust me, I know: dismissed 19 times by McGrath; 17 times by Courtney Walsh and Curtly Ambrose, and 11 times by Donald – in an era, it must be said, when five-match series against the top sides were the norm, not the exception. There wasn’t much respite.
Even now, I clearly the remember the torment. The long months of mental and technical preparation, trying to work out what went wrong last time and what to do better this; the nerves the night before the contest reignites; the reminders from the opposition about what had gone before. A form of mental disintegration, as Steve Waugh termed it.
Mike Brearley once wrote movingly of his (unequal) contests against the great Dennis Lillee, how Lillee could “never resist the lure of the interpersonal battle” and how this resulted in a more thrilling approach, inviting bouncers, yorkers and attacking strokes. And despite his lack of success, Brearley remembered this contest fondly: “It has been a privilege to know him; and to have batted against him, however ineptly,” he wrote.
These contests are cherished by those involved because, even if you fail, you recognise that you have been tested to your limit – and you can’t do that alone. It is the memories of the intense personal rivalries as well as the comradeship among teammates that most cricketers take with them into retirement – and if there is a bottle of champagne to remember it by, so much the better.