David Warner deserved to win the medal: Allan Border

Former Australian vice-captain David Warner’s redemption story reached its zenith in the recently concluded Australian annual awards where he was conferred with the best T20I player of the year award and also with the biggest award of the night- The Allan Border Medal which is given to the best Australian cricketer for the calendar year. Warner, who had previously won the award in 2016 and 2017, made a whirlwind comeback to International cricket post his 12-month ball-tampering ban.

The southpaw emerged as the second-highest run-scorer in the 50-over World Cup behind India’s Rohit Sharma. Besides that he finished with 793 ODI runs at an average of 72.09 followed by equally impressive performances in Tests and T20I cricket- 881 runs at 55.06 and 287 runs at an average of 287 respectively. Warner also went on to register the highest individual score by an Australian batsman in Test cricket when he shellacked the Pakistan bowling attack to the tune of 335 not-out at the Adelaide Oval.

That said, a lot of fans and pundits are not happy with Warner being conferred the Allan Border Medal, considering he failed miserably against Stuart Broad and England in the 2019 Ashes where he could only muster 95 runs in 10 innings. However, Allan Border feels that Warner is the deserved winner, given the way he has performed in the past 12 months.

“There was a sense of surprise when the final name was readout. But I think there were three or four very good contenders, with Smith and Pat Cummins in particular, Mitchell Starc, even Nathan Lyon had a fantastic 12 months,” Fox News quoted Border as saying.

He added: “But David Warner, with the way the votes were, came out on top. Very close margin but I think a deserved winner. He had a fantastic 12 months apart from that Ashes series, where Steve Smith was unbelievable. That’s why the voting was very, very close,”

The voting system should be looked at by the officials

Border, however, admitted that the officials should look in the voting system, following the latest events with Steve Smith and Pat Cummins losing out by 1 and 10 votes respectively. Border also highlighted the importance of scoring runs away from home.

“It’s very difficult to rank away Test matches against home Test matches. I have heard a little bit of argument about all that and it has some merit. There’s no doubt about that,” Border said.

He added “Maybe the voting system can be looked at. We’ve been going for 21 years, it’s probably time to have just a look at how the votes are put together and how it’s all combined over the three, four months of the game for that final winner. Maybe it is timely to have a bit of a look at that voting system.”