Warner's honesty deserves respect
In the Sydney Morning Herald, Greg Baum says David Warner deserves praise and not censure for his comments on South Africa's ability to reverse swing the ball in Port Elizabeth
01-Mar-2014
In the Sydney Morning Herald, Greg Baum says David Warner deserves praise and not censure for his comments on South Africa's ability to reverse swing the ball.
Not every cricketer can be Rahul Dravid. Not ever cricketing utterance can be a Mike Brearley-style dissertation, nor should be a Clarke-esque circumlocution. Warner, unable to dissemble, most often tells his see-ball-hit-ball truth, and pastiche notions of ''respect'' be damned. The least that can be said of his approach is that it is crazy-brave: it is he who stands in the 22-yard front line, facing an attack doubly rearmed by a new ball and fresh slight.
As long as Warner's gibes are not personal, nor demean innocents, what harm is in them, except to a spurious ideal of respect? Impugning professionalism is as old as professionalism. Separately, it is mystifying that work to coax a ball to reverse swing is regarded as a sin. Ryan Harris, in distancing himself from Warner's stance, inadvertently bore him out. ''You've got to do something with the ball, everyone does it,'' he said. ''They handled the ball better than us.''