David Warner, Steven Smith and Michael Clarke: The Story of Australia’s First Innings At Adelaide

After winning the toss captain Michael Clarke elected to bat first. The obvious plan behind that was to score 500 plus runs on one of the more batting friendly pitches in Australia and pile on the misery on the visitors thereafter. So far his plan has worked perfectly and the main actors to propagate it are David Warner, Steven Smith and the captain Michael Clarke himself.

It was absolutely two weeks back that David Warner, while fielding in a domestic match, saw his mate Phillips Hughes being struck on the neck by a bouncer and the rest is history. It seems that he has recovered form that shock sufficiently enough to inflict pain on the Indian bowlers. His belligerent 145 off 163 balls was ample testimony to that fact. His innings of 19 boundaries seemed particularly severe on the erratic new ball attack of Mohammed Shami and Varun Aaron. Unfortunately his susceptibility to spin bowling was his undoing this time around as well.

Steven Smith is an enigma to the cricketing world. When he plays a long innings like the century that he has scored here, he looks elegant and mesmerising. He actually reminds one of an early Michael Clarke but then it all comes crashing down. Like Clarke he does have the potential to lead his team someday but his inconsistency lets him down. Incidentally he averages just about 40 in Test Match cricket which is not good enough for a potential Australian captain.

What more can one say about Michael Clarke? He is the best batsman Australia presently have. Unfortunately his very well documented back problem is affecting not only his game but the whole of Cricket Australia's planning for the future as well. With the rain playing spoil sport the captain will have to make a decision quickly as to how many runs does he think are enough to let India start their innings.