Australia cricket star David Warner intends enlisting the help of his long-time idol Shane Warne..
By Wayne Smith The Australian April 09, 2012 12:29PM
Australia opening batsman David Warner intends enlisting the help of his long-time idol Shane Warne to help turn him from a part-time nuisance into a fully fledged Test leg-spinner.
Warner claimed the first two wickets of his burgeoning cricket career in the first Test against West Indies.
His first wicket-taking delivery was little more than a luscious half-tracker that batsman Kirk Edwards could have dispatched to virtually any part of the ground.
But, seemingly confounded by too many options, he smashed it straight back down the pitch where Warner somehow reached backwards to pluck it out of the air.
"I actually surprised myself," Warner said.
"It got to me pretty fast and he hit it pretty hard. Lucky I put my hands out. Ian (Gould), the umpire, said to me that if I didn't catch it, it would have hit him because he didn't see it."
Last December Warner could have become the 15th bowler in history - and only the third Australia player behind Arthur Coningham (1894) and present teammate Nathan Lyon (2011) - to claim a wicket with his first ball in Test cricket.
But, unhappily for him, James Pattinson dropped the catch against New Zealand at the Gabba.
Perhaps had the ball stuck, Warner might have come to be regarded as something more than a spare parts bowler but coming into his seventh Test, he had bowled only a total of three overs for 13 runs.
Few Australians at Kensington Oval then had any great hopes when Michael Clarke tossed him the ball with West Indies doing it easily at 1-121.
Yet with only his seventh delivery, Warner looked to have become the latest victim of Australia's poor fielding when he had West Indies opener Kraigg Brathwaite prodding forward to a sharply spinning ball that went straight between wicketkeeper Matthew Wade and Clarke at first slip.
Brathwaite, 49 at the time, tried to claim the resulting two byes as his own runs and lifted his bat to celebrate his "half-century", only to be then made aware the umpire had already signalled the sundries.
Still, he easily could have nicked it and Brathwaite wasn't the only one at the ground starting to look at Warner's bowling with new respect.
It was pure cricketing whimsy that Warner should receive no return from a gem of a delivery while claiming a wicket with a virtual long-hop.
"For Michael to throw me the ball is a thrill because I'm in the team as a batsman but now I guess I can consider myself a bowler," he said.
"Growing up I bowled a lot of leg spin. My junior stuff I was batting six and bowling a lot of leggies."
But Warner, who bowls right-arm even if he bats left-handed - small wonder he can play the switch hit - said he had pretty much stopped bowling leggies for anything but fun in the nets until bowling guru Craig McDermott and head coach Mickey Arthur advised him that Australia could have need of his bowling skills.
"It adds another string to the team also," Warner said.
"I'm going to be practising a lot more in the nets."
Given that Warner does his best to imitate Warne as a bowler, it only made sense to ask him if he planned to seek out history's greatest leg-spinner for help and advice.
"I definitely will," he replied. "From growing up as a kid I've modelled myself, through his run-up and everything. If you want to be the best you might as well model the best.
"Everything that he's done and everything that I've tried to look at, how he gets his wickets, how he goes about shuffling the batsman across the crease ... that's how a bowler would think. But for me to get the opportunity to bowl and just turn into a normal leg-spinner is amazing."
