David Warner’s final Test summer in Australia to split opinion, but bring a spark to Pakistan series
In the shadows of a World Cup triumph and still hungover from the most heated Ashes series in nearly a century, the Australian cricket summer has crept on us.
The WBBL has been run and won as the women’s squad now gets set for a Christmas tour of India, where Australia A (featuring Travis Head) has finally completed the five-game T20 series that you definitely knew was on.
The men’s Big Bash starts this week. The first men’s Test against Pakistan starts in Perth next week. Then it’s Boxing Day, by which point cricket has traditionally taken over the public’s summer consciousness entirely.
The build-up has been conspicuously lacking, and the squad announcement passed by with barely the slightest hint of rancour. Where’s the juice? Where’s the spice?
The same place it has been for 15 years. David Warner is the juice, and this is his summer.
Operating from the timetable he set for himself, Warner is a little over a month away from international retirement. Earlier this year, before the Ashes in England had even begun, Warner flagged the New Year’s Test of 2024 in Sydney as his swan song.
Very few cricketers get to set their own date. The end creeps up on most, even some of the greatest. Ricky Ponting earned a farewell tour, Steve Waugh almost had two, but they are the exceptions.
Allan Border begrudgingly called time in amid a stand-off with the ACB. Adam Gilchrist dropped a catch and immediately started making plans for his future. Even Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath allowed themselves only two Tests at the end of an Ashes series to say their goodbyes.
So Warner is one of the lucky ones. His selection in the squad for the first Test against Pakistan suggests his wishes will be granted, and an emotional Sydney send-off in front of family and friends has been booked for the first week of January.
But that alone is simply not juicy enough. In the meantime, we get to reopen The Great David Warner Debate, if it ever had, in fact, been closed.
What is his legacy? Is he worthy of a protracted retirement tour? What of Cape Town and the ball tampering and all that? What of his lack of meaningful runs in the twilight of his career? What of him as a person, which is what all of this seems to always come back to?
Mitchell Johnson, off his long run as ever, has done his part to inflame the discussion again.
Writing for The West Australian, Johnson questioned why Warner warrants a “hero’s send-off”, again raising his role in the 2018 Sandpapergate scandal for which he was banned from international cricket for a year and from holding a leadership role in the Australian team for life.
Johnson then took aim at George Bailey, chairman of selectors, for his consistent selection of Warner. Bailey’s response, dripping with disdain, was that he “hopes [Johnson] is OK”.
Ahh, there’s the juice. Former players cutting sick in the media, all of Australian cricket’s recent demons being conjured from their shallow graves, all with a subtle hint of gaslighting.
Isn’t it good to be talking about Test cricket again?
No matter your feelings about David Warner, you are right to have them.
As a cricketer, Warner worked harder than most to convince the world he is a Test opener, even as he played in a manner that position had never seen before. His record should now do that talking for him — if he’s not the best Test-opening bat Australia has ever had, he’s in the top three or four.
But his record in recent years has slipped, to the point where he has been genuinely fortunate to have maintained a position in the team.
As a public-facing role model, Warner has often fallen short. His attempts to move with the times of what is considered acceptable conduct on the cricket field have not always been successful, the blemishes significant enough to stay with him to the end of his career and beyond.
In saying that, judgements of his character off the field are not ones we should or possibly could make.
Warner is polarising, to say the least. He is multi-faceted, impossible to surmise without a weight of context and a healthy amount of caveats.
But he is box office. From that first T20 against South Africa at the MCG to whatever you call this current situation, it has been impossible to look away. We haven’t always liked what we’ve seen, but we haven’t always hated it either.
Whether or not you think he has “earned” a series-long ride into the sunset, by whatever nebulous metrics you use to measure those things, the truth is that this summer needs it.
A weary Australia playing Tests against Pakistan and West Indies in this day and age unfortunately has all the hallmarks of another lost summer — the ones in between the ones where England or India come over.
There are no great young hopes about to break into the team, Lance Morris notwithstanding — though it’s unlikely Australia would split up the usual bowling foursome unless injury forced it to.
The consensus replacement for Warner at the top of the order is 31-year-old Cameron Bancroft, which while a deserved selection hardly get the pulses racing.
So the nation turns its lonely eyes to Davey one last time. One last summer of arguments, online and around barbecues. One last chance for an innings or two that allows us to lay down our misdeeds and relish the raw ability of a gifted cricketer who has done as much to take the Australian game into its modern era as any.
Welcome to the Summer of Davey. At least it’s not going to be boring.
