: As Australia endure a prolonged bout of self-flagellation over their Ashes performance at Lord’s, David Warner has gone from whipping boy to potential saviour following his return to the fold ahead of Thursday’s third Test. The beast from Botany Bay needs to get picked first, though after his 193 against South Africa A in Pretoria, and with coach Darren Lehmann admitting a desperate need for players to make hundreds against England, one box has been ticked.
However, Lehmann said that Warner was not guaranteed an immediate return to the Test side.
“He’s not a certainty, no,” Lehmann said. “He got 193 and played well, did exactly what we wanted him to do. We want blokes to make hundreds and he’s ticked that box.
“Again we’ll have to look at the wicket and we come up with the top six.”
There is a risk in playing him, not from his relative lack of cricket, which Australia are desperate enough to overlook, but over the anger issues which seem forever to be simmering just below the surface. The punch he landed on Joe Root in a Birmingham bar two months ago may seem like ancient history in this rolling, 24-hour-news world, but it will be revived time and again by England’s players in the middle should he be picked at Old Trafford. Can he cope? His recent on-field spats in Pretoria with Thami Tsolekile suggest that he still likes to dish out the verbals but England’s chief wind-up merchants — James Anderson, Stuart Broad and Matt Prior — will test whether he can he take them. Root, too, could chip in, and while wearing a green-and-gold wig on the field might be a bit too obvious, he could niggle away from silly point whenever Graeme Swann is bowling. Australia used to revere sportsmen like Warner who were combative, aggressive and got into the faces of opponents with none-too-witty sledging.
Yet Australia has changed and with it its cricket team, and where once their Test side had five or six players chipping away to distract you, Warner tends to stand out now like some primitive howling at the moon.
Many still admire him for refusing to change. Ricky Ponting began his international career similarly railing against the world but managed to knock off the rough edges, eventually. Warner too has a softer side, buying his parents an apartment in Sydney. He is also said to enjoy a late night and the odd vodka, a habit for which he was admonished under the old regime. Lehmann likes a beer and cigarette, but is unlikely to turn a blind eye should Warner persist in his folly. As one Australian journalist put it: “Mickey Arthur tied Warner to a piece of string and then tried to haul him in whenever he erred. Darren Lehmann has got him on the same bit of string but when he runs wild he’ll just cut him loose, for good.”
After their woeful performance at Lord’s, Australia’s management will be keen to do something bold now if they are to prevent England retaining the Ashes after just three Tests. Warner, who turns 27 in October, has the potential to change games in the way Kevin Pietersen often can, brutally and quickly, though the series has yet to be influenced by that type of player. Michael Clarke and Lehmann will want him back and according to some sources the coach has already told Warner he will bat at six, which if true will mean cheery bye to Phil Hughes, the most vulnerable of Australia’s top order after Lord’s.
John Inverarity, the chief selector, is a former headmaster, and he will see the caveats of playing Warner, as well as the crowing headlines, if it goes wrong.
But England’s bowlers have yet to be put under any significant pressure, apart from the final day at Trent Bridge, and an eager-to-please Warner, engaging bat rather than banter, might just do that. Certainly something radical needs to happen and not the five-day state matches being proposed by Pat Howard, Cricket Australia’s general manager of team performance, which seems a reactionary solution to careless batting.
Playing Warner would no doubt outrage a certain section of Australian society, but it might just provide the jolt the team need to avoid the oblivion another meek batting performance would bring. Ashes cricket needs to be competitive and Warner is that above all else.
