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You can always correlate innovation with Australian batter David Warner. He often tries to stay ahead of the bowlers with his different batting applications in order to disturb the lengths of the bowler.
One cannot allow bowlers to bowl on their own terms and strategies. To be ahead of bowlers, a batter needs to be proactive with his footwork, choice of bowlers, and overs to attack.
David Warner is one of those batters who does it more proficiently than many of his contemporaries.
Be it making tweaks in his batting stances, switching hits, or batting right-handed to counter match-ups, Warner has been quite innovative in his batting approach so far in his cricket career.
Here's a list of three instances when David Warner outsmarted the bowlers and captain's strategies to counter the off-spinners, a positive match-up mostly against left-handers.
#1 David Warner against Mohammad Hafeez
In 2012, Mohammad Hafeez was troubling David Warner, who was new to international cricket, on a Sharjah pitch that had enough purchase for the spinners.
The opener looked all at sea against Hafeez, who was bowling in the right channels, pushing Warner on the back foot most of the time bowling back-of-length deliveries. He was constantly getting beaten by length and turn and was not able to rotate the strike.
Watch the video below from 2:11 onwards:
The southpaw decided to force Hafeez to change his line, and just when Hafeez reached his delivery stride, Warner changed his stance to right-handed and comfortably defended the delivery, which would have slid down the leg for left-handed Warner.
#2 David Warner against Chris Gayle
Never in his career did Warner find so much success switching stances as he did this time against Chris Gayle while playing for the Sylhet Strikers in the Bangladesh Premier League 2019 season.
As he approached his half-century, Warner struggled to score off Gayle earlier in the innings and faced two dot balls in a row.
Frustrated, Warner decided to reverse his stance.
Gayle, after a brief period of confusion, continued to bowl around the wicket. He gave his next ball plenty of flight and bowled a full-length delivery onto the stumps. Warner backed away slightly and smoked the ball straight down the ground and over the boundary for six.
Warner, even after completing his half-century, continued batting with his new stance for Gayle’s next delivery.
Gayle bowled a full toss wide of the stumps, and Warner played a paddle sweep through square leg past the fielder for four.
On the final ball of the over, Warner then moved back almost into a left-handed stance as the ball came towards him and played it behind the square and picked up his third boundary in a row.
#3 David Warner against Hrithik Shokeen
In the eighth over of the match against Mumbai Indians in IPL 2023, Delhi Capitals skipper David Warner was at the crease to face a free hit from young off-spinner Hrithik Shokeen.
Shokeen overstepped on the third ball of the over, with Manish Pandey tapping a quicker delivery towards long-on to take a single, bringing Warner on strike.
The DC skipper then came up with an unusual stance and took a right-handed batting stance, but to his dismay, he went for a big heave to what was a half-tracker from Shokeen and mistimed it completely, and the ball ultimately dropped around the 30-yard circle, fetching just a single.
