Follow UsIt was scintillating batsmanship at its very best, with David Warner and Mitchell Marsh matching each other for stroke to stroke to ensure that Australia posted the second-highest World Cup opening partnership. From 259/0 in 34 overs, Australia had it in them to score over 400 runs, but things changed dramatically with Shaheen Afridi and Haris Rauf registering eight wickets between them to restrict the five-time champions to 367.
Reveling on his own success and how far Australia could have gone in the match, David Warner, who has played a lot of cricket in India over the years to gain a perspective, said, “For me, I look to try and get to 35 overs and then from there, try and put my foot down if I'm still in. So, yeah, it's probably in the back of your mind; you've got a lot more time. And I think that's where, in T20 cricket, I've learned a little bit as well to change my gears, especially in IPL.
“I learned a lot when I was playing for Sunrisers that you're able to have a lot more time than you think. And I think playing on these surfaces specifically, you know, if you give yourself time at the back end, you can actually score big. And that's what I felt today. We missed a little bit with the bat. We set our platform up very, very well, and we didn't execute as well as we like as a batting unit to post what I thought 400 was probably on the cards from where we were,” Warner said in the post-match press conference.
This was Warner’s fourth consecutive century against Pakistan across formats, but the southpaw didn’t put much thought behind the record, stating it’s about turning up each day and finding the best approach to play the game.
“I think sometimes you just match up well against certain teams and they're going to bowl you good balls. Sometimes you're going to put away those good balls. But I think you just keep backing yourself. I don't really look at any stats, or I don't look at anything of which team I have success against or not. It just so happens to be that I've scored, as you said, four consecutive hundreds, which I didn't know about until they came up. But for me, it's going out there and just doing my best every time I go out there.
“And I think for me, I'll probably even look at someone like Shaheen Shah and think, oh, he probably has my measure a little bit. But he doesn't. They're the guys that you try and watch as hard as you can, left arm swinging at about 140 Ks [kph] It can be a difficult task to try and take on, but yeah, look, I don't really have the answer to give you but just go out there and try my best against each opposition,” Warner added.