Over a long career, David Warner has presented many versions of himself. The short-form bludgeoner of his T20 debut in 2009 gave way to the studious opener of his first Test century on a Hobart greentop in 2011. The raucous presence known as The Bull who was suspended from the 2013 Ashes gave way to the contemplative Reverend by 2015, schooling teammates on the power of positive thinking, before returning to his most confrontational mode before the Ashes in 2017. The instigator of the sandpaper ball-tampering plot in 2018 served a year’s playing ban, ran the well-worn path of public redemption via on-field success, and has since presented himself as an elder statesman with an accordingly impeccable disciplinary record.
The way he is perceived has also shifted, in cricket media at least, but no shifts have been bigger than the past few weeks as his campaign to have his leadership ban overturned ran into a brick wall. Where his co-accused Steve Smith was banned from captaincy for two years, and Cameron Bancroft not at all, Warner was for life. And while he was in the gun in 2018, here is now broadly a consensus that his punishment was excessive and the review process unfair.
