Indians just love Sachin, not Test cricket: David Warner

[rkt.india]

He did not have a good Test series but he is surely one of the mainstays of the Delhi side in the Indian T20 League. As vice-captain and deputy to Mahela Jawayardene, David Warner has the additional responsibility of steering his team forward in the sixth season of the mega-tournament. He did look good at the Eden Gardens before he was foxed by Sunil Narine and it was evident in the absence of Virender Sehwag; Mahela and Warner will have to bat through for Delhi. Here's Warner in a candid conversation with Boria Majumdar on the tournament, its robustness as a brand, a comparison with Test cricket in India and what the tournament means to him personally. Excerpts: David the T20-League is now in its sixth season and we continue to get sizeable crowds in the stadiums. Do you think the crowd presence is indicative of the robustness of the brand? For sure. I keep telling people back home that if you want to see real passion come and see the T20-League in India. It is quite unique and is comparable in passion to an All Blacks versus Wallabies match for example. I don't see anything like it when Test cricket is played in India. You have actually led me to the next question. How do you compare it with the just concluded Test series? We were winning convincingly and yet there were no more than 10,000 people in the stands for most days. In contrast, the Kolkata-Delhi game had a huge crowd at the Eden Gardens. What explains this do you think? Look I don't know if I should say it, but the truth is in India people just love Sachin but they don't like Test cricket. Let me elaborate. When Cheteshwar Pujara and Murali Vijay were batting together in Hyderabad and flogging us, the fans should have cheered each run. In every other country, they'd have each run cheered. Here things were different. Every appeal was cheered by the crowd. They just wanted one of the two to get out. This was because Sachin would come out next. I kept thinking to myself what must be going through the minds of Vijay and Pujara. Here were two people batting 150 each and their own people wanted them to get out. They just wanted to see their god bat. I think people in India love personalities more and the game itself less. That is a real dangerous trend. Once Sachin retires, Test cricket will have a real problem in India. You make a rather interesting point there. When I compare our situation to Australia I always see a sizeable crowd at the MCG for the Boxing Day Test match or at the SCG for the New-Year test match. Do you think this says something about the sporting cultures of the two countries? That's the festive season in Australia and also the holiday period. People will always come out to watch cricket in December-January. Importantly there is also a decent crowd in February for most of our games. The baggy green will always be revered in Australia and our people will always watch cricket irrespective of who is playing. It is the team that matters unlike the Indian situation. Coming back to the T20-League what do you think makes the T20-League as a brand tick? It has the best congregation of players from round the world and everyone wants to win and win badly. Most importantly your brand as a cricketer is on show and it is on you to stand up and deliver for your franchise. I totally disagree with the concept that the T20-League is easy money. It certainly isn't. We are getting close to a million dollars from the tournament. Now, if that is not incentive enough to perform at our best I don't know what is. As vice-captain of the Daredevils, do you have added responsibilities this year? I don't see it like that. My job is to help Mahela as much as I can and always be alert at the ground. We have to bowl 20 overs in 90 minutes and it always helps if someone else is there to help the captain. I will also try and help the youngsters as much as I can. That you mention youngsters anyone in particular has caught your eye? I like Unmukt Chand a lot. He comes to my room often and asks me a lot of questions. We discuss how to deal with pressure situations and I tell him about my discussions with the Australian psychologist Mike Lloyd. He is a terrific talent and has a bright future for India. Final question- Ashes follows the T20-League. Do you think you have a realistic chance against the English? Of course we do. We have a very good bowling line up for English conditions. Siddle, Pattinson, Ryan Harris who is fit, Starc, Jackson Bird are all very good bowlers for the English conditions. If the batsmen step up and we will do all we can to win there is no reason why we can't beat the English. And I must tell you that playing Ashwin in India will definitely help us negotiate Graeme Swann in England. That's a huge positive from the India series.

http://www.cricbuzz.com/cricket-news/54998/indians-just-love-sachin-not-test-cricket-david-warner

[Sidhoni]

Spot on! Great that he had the balls to say that. :hatsoff:

[asterix]

Shame on those pathetic Indian idiots who were applauding any appeal against Pujara or Mooli so that Chin-Chin comes to bat...

[JaFanatic]

in b4 some genius posters blaming sachin for this B->

[kubrickian]

Even Australians dont love test cricket. They got beaten 4-0 without putting up a fight. :hysterical: Even Bangladesh would have done better.

[rkt.india]

This is why I want him to play as long as possible.

[Rohit S. Ambani]

This is why I want him to play as long as possible.

Answer to all your worries is Rohit Sharma.

[Sachin=GOD]

I don't know about the other 3 Tests but in the 4th Test at Delhi there was a pretty good crowd on the first day itself even though the series was already decided, it was a Friday and Australia was batting. Ishant was bowling well in his 1st spell and the fans were constantly cheering him. Same was the case with Ashwin later in the day. Also, every bit of good fielding by Indians and good shots played by Aussies were appreciated so saying that Indian fans don't like Test cricket isn't right. p.s. the biggest cheer on the ground was in fact reserved for Goddy - all he had to do was to pick up the ball while fielding and the crowd would erupt. Similarly, every time he went towards a stand, people starting chanting his name :--D

[Ultimate_Game]

That's actually well put. When the home team cheers for the wkt of a batsman who has just scored 150+, and in fact even cheers when a batsman has got out while the team is trying to chase and win a Test in 4th innings, it shows you where the priority of the crowd lies.

[vvvslaxman]

Tendulkar had tremendous amount of support in Chennai as well. But i wouldn't say Dhoni or Ashwin received any less.

[cowboysfan]

**** this guy,there are more test lovers in India than the entire population of australia.

[Number]

Cricket is one boring sport. SRT retires, then Cricket won't even have 10% of its followers from India.

[GoldenSun]

As much as I agree with him to an extent, it is wrong to go around and generalize a group. Personally I have always cared about the well being of the team even when Sachin was playing or not. To me, no single player, no matter how great he is, is bigger than the game itself. He was never bigger than the team for me at any point and I would never give up on Indian cricket after he retires. This is like saying "Australians are racist" for what happened in 2009 or "Americans only love baseball". I still love test cricket and continue to support India despite that heart burning losses to England and Australia the past 2 years. I like David Warner for his aggressiveness, but all he has done is invite the wrath of Indian fans. I would have been fine with this if he had said "SOME Indian fans only seem to care about Sachin and not the team itself". He hasn't learned his lesson after that post world t20 rant against Indian fans. Unfortunately though, he has a point. Remember when West Indies came to play a test in Mumbai 2 years ago? The attendance was crap for the first 2 days and when Sachin was nearing his century on day 3, everyone magically filled in. It really did get my blood boiling. I was actually delighted when he got out for once. Majority of the audience left IMMEDIATELY when he got out cheaply.

[Karan114]

It is difficult to think of a more obnoxious cricketer than this overrated hack David Warner. Attitude matches the arrogant, condescending and general assholish character of the Ponting/McGrath/Hayden/Warne generation - only problem is in terms of ability he is nowhere near so just comes across as a total ****. He's very vocal about how much his country loves Test cricket but I can assure him, if hacks like him keep losing 4-0 then there won't be many fans left. Australian cricket fans are very fickle.

[kubrickian]

As much as I agree with him to an extent, I wish he would not generalize Indians. Personally I have always cared about the well being of the team even when Sachin was playing or not. He was never bigger than the team for me at any point and I would never give up on Indian cricket after he retires. I like David Warner, but he should have said "some Indian fans". Also in that t20 tirade he gave last year on twitter, he should not have generalized all Indians. Unfortunately though, he has a point. Remember when West Indies came to play a test in Mumbai 2 years ago? The attendance was crap for the first 2 days and when Sachin was nearing his century on day 3, everyone magically filled in. It really did get my blood boiling. I was actually delighted when he got out for once.

He is an ignorant fool who likes to generalize. Of course, majority of fans dont have time to watch or follow test cricket but there will always be a significant bunch of people who watch test cricket in India. These people in numbers will be higher than all cricket fans in other countries.

[G_B_]

He is right. While i did not hear cheering for appeals, i did heard cheers when an Indian wicket fell and sachin came out. To be fair, in that hyderabad test there was a crowd on all the days of cricket, even when India were bowling.

[Deleted_User_1]

Fecker can't even play IPL now....what a joke! Yes, Indians do not give a flying feck about Test Kirkut.....IPL tamasha and ODIs....expect test kirkut to die in the next couple decades....it will tontee-tontee all the fecking way.

[trundlerNO1]

He has got a point

[Raghav_12]

Well we need to understand that each sport needs stars. Sport without stars is nothing. It could be politically correct to say that player can't be bigger than game itself, but that's not reality. You take out Usain Bolt today, and followers of 100 m race will go down hugely. What David Warner is trying to explain similar phenomena. There is lot of spectators who go in stadium to get a glimpse of Sachin. Cricket is secondary for them. I don't see anything wrong in that. Some stars supersede sports and sport remains indebted to them for bringing spectators to it. It is not only about Tendulkar. It is rather common across sports.

[Sid]

It is difficult to think of a more obnoxious cricketer than this overrated hack David Warner. Attitude matches the arrogant, condescending and general assholish character of the Ponting/McGrath/Hayden/Warne generation - only problem is in terms of ability he is nowhere near so just comes across as a total ****. He's very vocal about how much his country loves Test cricket but I can assure him, if hacks like him keep losing 4-0 then there won't be many fans left. Australian cricket fans are very fickle.

I havent seen a post from you without those 4 stars in a long why :hysterical: But agree with you :nice: