Cheeky Warner takes a shot at Mr Nice Guys

IT was like feeling the wrath of an agitated Snow White.

New Zealand fast man Tim Southee pounced on a ball from Joe Burns and struck the batsman after hurling the ball back at him as he stood in front of his stumps. The first spark of the series had ignited.

David Warner offered: “Mate, c’mon, you are supposed to be Mr Nice Guys.’’

You don’t reckon Warner had that one up his sleeve ready for the first time a Kiwi saucepan lid started to wobble with the hot bubbles?

Former Kiwi captain Brendon McCullum quipped in commentary that Warner playing the behavioural guardian was a bit much but it was an interesting moment.

New Zealand had been painted as the team with the moral standings as pure as the driven snow so this was an unexpected icebreaker.

It also spotlighted the issue of Warner’s potential future in verbal combat and perhaps even highlights the place he is best suited to in the suddenly cleansed world of modern cricket.

In his turbulent Test career Warner has occupied both ends of the behavioural spectrum. He’s been the raging bull and the specially designated attack dog and he’s also switched off the volume so completely that for a while he was called The Reverend.

Neither extreme seemed to fit.

In that tiny exchange with Southee, on the summer’s hottest cricket day, Warner may have found the right temperature for the road forward.

A bit of banter. A point made. A little barb landed. But it was a far cry from the acidtipped verbal assaults of a few years ago. In the new cultural world Australia has imposed upon itself after the ball tampering affair in Cape Town the Australia has to be careful where it treads verbally but you would hate to see cricket lose little exchanges like the Warner-Southee nibble which have always enlivened the game.

Warner was unlucky to fall to a spectacular caught and bowled by the energetic Neil Wagner but he had plenty of luck against Pakistan so the ledger is balanced.