(Cricket News) Australia’s selectors named David Warner in their 14-man squad for the first Test against Pakistan on Sunday, as expected. Bailey, the chairman of selectors, claimed that Warner was in Australia’s best XI.
Former fast bowler Mitchell Johnson has launched a scathing attack on his former teammates, saying that Warner’s desire for a Test farewell on his terms reeked of the same “arrogance and disrespect” as the sandpaper incident in 2018 and that Bailey is too close to the players.
“It is been five years and David Warner has still never really owned the ball-tampering scandal,” Johnson wrote in his Sunday column in The West Australian. “Now the way he is going out is underpinned by more of the same arrogance and disrespect to our country.”
Johnson also questioned Warner’s public desire for a Test farewell and why it was being accommodated by the selectors despite his form over the last two years, given he has averaged 26.74 in his last 36 Test innings.
“Can someone please explain to me why, as we get ready for David Warner’s farewell series, a struggling Test opener gets to choose when to retire, and why a player at the centre of one of the biggest scandals in Australian cricket history deserves a hero’s send-off?
Warner is not Australia’s Test captain and never deserved to be, for that matter; in fact, he ends his career under a leadership ban that is good for life. Yes, he has a respectable overall record and some would even argue that he is one of our best opening batsmen, but his batting average over the last three years in Test cricket has been ordinary, closer to what a tailender would be happy with.
“Yes, he scored his first century and a half against South Africa at the MCG last summer, but those were his only runs for years, and that was the only time he had reached 50 in his previous 17 Test innings before this year’s Ashes series.”
From 2009 until his retirement in 2015, Warner and Johnson were teammates in Australia’s 5-0 Ashes series victory in 2013–14. Both of them played a part in the 2015 ODI World Cup victory and played a huge part in Australia’s dominance in international cricket.
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