David Warner was close to being washed up – now he appears capable of anything

David Warner was close to being washed up – now he appears capable of anything

Australia batsman David Warner (Getty Images)

On an early summer evening in a sticky basement room of a London hotel, a sporting career was unravelling. The mood was confused. There was a palpable desire to see that the man being reluctantly paraded for denouncement should be punished.

It was accompanied by a faint sense of despair, fuelled by the uncomfortable feeling that he was on the verge of wasting his opportunities. For the second time in weeks he was being forced to apologise for his stupidity.

First, he had become embroiled in an unseemly, expletive-laden (on his part) spat via Twitter with some widely respected Australian journalists. But this was much worse. He had punched a fellow cricketer in the face in a late-night bar. Both incidents were at least partly provoked by too much booze and now, among other things, he was forced to deny that he had a drink problem.

Contrition was demanded and given. When this modern version of public flogging was done there was a distinct impression that the small, bullish man would soon be washed up. His uncontrolled behaviour was making a nonsense of his unquestioned talent.

By last night in Perth the redemption of David Warner seemed complete. His 244 not out on the first day of the second Test against New Zealand was (so far, as it were) an innings of brilliance, verve and absolute certainty. From the moments when he struck his first two balls for four with quite haughty assurance, his progress to a hundred and beyond was settled as if it were a contract.

This was his first double century but his third Test hundred in consecutive innings, following his pair in Brisbane last week, and he became only the second opening batsman to achieve this feat twice. The other is Sunil Gavaskar of India.

Warner’s rich run of form extends further. Each of his last eight Test matches have brought at least one score above fifty – including all five Ashes games last summer. He failed to go on to a hundred in any innings then but England’s relief whenever he was dismissed was unmistakable. He is different. Simple as that.

Greg Chappell, an early mentor and himself a great batsman, told the Australian cricket writer, Peter Lalor: “I have always found David really good, albeit headstrong, but that’s part of his attraction. He’s a risk-taker. He doesn’t look at the world in the same way we do. He doesn’t look at batting the same way we look at it, and that’s why he is what he is.”

There will be some scepticism about the innings in Perth – ridiculously flat pitch, poor New Zealand bowling – but this should not diminish its virtuosity. Warner’s very presence made the pitch flatter and the bowling poorer. Watching him and understanding that there is probably nothing that he cannot do as a batsman, it also struck a chord that we may be in another golden age of batting.

In the early part of the century, the game was blessed with wonderful batsmen – players for the ages – and most of their names are near the top of the Test runs chart. Brian Lara, Ricky Ponting, Jacques Kallis. When Sachin Tendulkar finally called it a day two years ago a seminal chapter was closed.

But another one has been started and it contains Warner, AB de Villiers, Joe Root (the object of Warner’s punch), Virat Kohli and Steve Smith. Between them they may not be quite reinventing batting but they are casting it an entirely new light.

These players can do things with a bat that were unheard of 20 years ago and do them as second nature. The troubles for bowlers multiply. They are, too often, operating on pitches that provide too little encouragement (which is why criticism of the surfaces in England last summer was misplaced). In many places they have a ball that hardly helps. And, as was the case with Warner, they worry more about what he can do to them than getting him out.

It is also possible that the bowling in general is not as good as the batting. Trent Boult, a superb operator in England just six months ago, is being dismembered by Warner.

Warner remains confrontational and quite capable of getting up the collective nose of opponents. There is always an edge, even now that he is in a settled relationship and has a young baby – which has undoubtedly, as he has conceded, been beneficial.

The game will catch up on him because it always does. But he is really something. Chappell knew it a year ago. “We have seen his best, but he can show us more of it more often. He will take another step at some stage and I don’t think it’s far away. He will become more ruthless, he will get some big scores. That will be the difference in the next phase – his brilliant hundreds will become big hundreds and double-hundreds, maybe more.” That Kensington hotel room seems from another age.