The second Test in Adelaide began with new stories bubbling around David Warner, and ended its first day with the same old story of Australia batting West Indies out of the game. Changing red ball for pink and changing daytime match for night did not help a visiting side that also had to change four of its players through injury. The stumps score of 330-3 was built around unbeaten centuries for Marnus Labuschagne and Travis Head, following the Perth Test in which Labuschagne made two hundreds and Head made 99.
Attention was on Warner as he walked to the middle, and not just because Australia had won the toss and chosen to bat. The opener had just withdrawn his application to have his lifetime captaincy ban overturned, unhappy that the independent panel convened to hear the case wanted to do so publicly and to ask questions about the original offences stemming from the ball-tampering future of 2018, rather than focus on his behaviour since. On the morning of the match his manager claimed that senior Cricket Australia officials had told players to ball-tamper as early as 2016.
