Warner is probably best suited at the top of the order: Steve Smith

David Warner of Australia has been in great form in the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) for his franchise, Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH). Opening the batting with Shikhar Dhawan, the pair has one of the best averages in opening partnerships this season. Australian captain Steve Smith admitted that it was a wrong decision to play David Warner in the middle-order in the World Twenty20 2016 in India. Warner had scored just 38 runs in the WorldT20 with a poor average of 9.50.

For the first half of the tournament, Warner had been like a one-man army for the Sunrisers scoring the bulk lot of runs for his side and leading them to be the first team to qualify for the playoffs this season. His partner Shikhar Dhawan found his form back in the middle of the tournament and from there it has been all good news for the ‘orange army’, with Yuvraj Singh and Ben Cutting also playing a crucial role in the last few matches.

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The southpaw has been the run-machine for the Sunrisers Hyderabad with 567 runs from 12 matches so far at a healthy average of 56.70. Australia might have missed the trick in playing him in the middle order.

Steve Smith told Fox Sports News, “He’s probably best suited at the top of the order. We had our best six batters playing. Obviously, Usman Khawaja had been batting particularly well and Aaron Finch, he’s been playing well over in the IPL as well.”

“We had plenty of options and I decided on Davey (David Warner) to bat at number three in the end. He had his opportunities to score runs as well and we just didn’t bat as well as we would have liked in the middle order to get ourselves the totals we needed to win games in India,” he concluded.