The best dramatic villains are dramatic villains who don’t know they’re dramatic villains; who might even turn out to be heroes.
Satan in Paradise Lost, for example, who sees himself less as the embodiment of all human evil, more a kind of underdog freedom fighter, Che Guevara with hooves.
We remember Hans Gruber in Die Hard, who remains convinced right to the end that he’s actually the main character in this setup, that what is really happening here is a droll and stylish outsider is carrying out a victimless heist on coked-up American hyper-capitalists, hindered only by a bloodthirsty policeman in a vest.
Even in sport, where the emotional barometer is fixed to extreme binary judgment, there can be grey areas and a confusion of roles. It isn’t easy writing these words. But as David Warner embarks on his farewell home summer it seems the right moment to admit that actively disliking Warner, dwelling on his failings, his main villain energy, has always felt a little awkward and forced.
The thing is, I like him. Maybe you secretly like him too. It’s fine. This is a safe space. There is no judgment here. Although of course there is actually quite a lot of judgment, because Warner as sporting villain has always seemed such a clearcut role.
No cricketer has ever been so relentlessly barracked (racism reasons aside) on an English cricket field. No elite player has been banned for a year for bang-to-rights on-field cheating and then just carried on at the same level. Warner has even begun to consciously embrace the whiskery, snickering cartoon-dog aesthetic. He looks evil – and looks, optics, snapshots, are of course the most important thing.
Yet, as Warner prepares to exit Test cricket it is time to accept also that we will miss him, that he made the sport feel epic and vital. And that in defiance of the way his career began he was not just an all-format great, but an active agent for Test cricket’s primacy, a bulwark against its disappearance beneath the waters. He might, in fact, have been one of the heroes.
This is, of course, a record-scratch moment requiring some urgent explanation, including a bit later on where I wave away premeditated cheating as actually not that bad. For now it was just a simple pleasure watching Warner bat against Pakistan this week on those familiar grainy, bleached-out TV pictures, bounced around the planet from Perth into the gloom of an English December, a place of deep greens and hard white light, of bowlers who get overexcited by the bounce and pace, and of course the annual spectacle of Warner slugging and bristling his way to a hundred against the latest touring fall guys.
Channel 7 has already pegged its marketing around the idea of a homecoming for a fine, ageing team and a special farewell to its underembraced champion opener. Warner’s hundred in Perth sets up that arc perfectly for a Christmas exhibition at the MCG and a final curtain in Sydney.
All the usual stuff was there. Warner is not an aesthetically striking batter. He has three basic movements, the offside slap, the swat-drive, the pull. He’s like Alastair Cook on steroids. Here he clanked the part-time off-spinner over wide long-on like a man hitting a conker over a clump of trees with a frying pan, and later produced a superb falling-over hook-paddle for six, looking the other way, already grinning as he tumbled backwards.
There was even some classic press conference beef afterwards, with a lot of talk about “the shush” celebration. (“You touch on the shush”. “Yeah it was a shush”). Shushes, hundreds, a discussion of grudges and etiquette. More everyday cricketers are available. We look forward to the thoughts next year of Jayden Goodbloke, who makes self-aware jokes and doesn’t seem insane, powered by rage or unhealthily obsessed with the meaning of a green hat. For now it is time to treasure a last great summer of Dave.
Perhaps to recap the rap sheet. Most recently Warner has been accused by Mitchell Johnson of making the summer all about him and his own cosseted retirement, charges that only stack up if you start from a position of pre-hating Warner and/or recently having received a rude text message from him.
Warner’s form has been so-so. But it’s just about good enough. You could take a shot at his overall career record. It has been suggested he’s a home bully, averaging 58 in Australia and 31 overseas. But Warner is an all-rounder in the modern way, thriving across all formats rather than all conditions: Test average of 45, player of a T20 World Cup, ODI world champ. Opening is hard. Warner has done it very well.
Then of course we have the bad stuff. Warner was the key figure in the sandpaper scandal. But there are some odd parts here, too. Australia’s bowlers have repeatedly stated that none of them knew anything about it, that Warner was out there on his own trying to induce reverse swing without telling the guys who would actually have to alter their lengths and hold the ball the right way.
This seems a weird thing for Warner to have done. Tip for future ball-fiddlers: tell the bowlers or it won’t work. Yet it must be true because, despite losing hundreds of thousands of dollars, Warner has never ratted anyone out, never hinted at wider complicity, just took his (harsh) punishment.
There is something else, too. This was a very specific kind of cheating: team cheating. There were no runs in it for Warner, no personal glory, no money, no longer stay at the crease. He was cheating for the win, cheating so teammates could get wickets. Is there a higher, more noble form of cheating? Perhaps not. But if there was, this would probably be it.
What else has he done? Been a boor and a wazzock on the field of play. Punched Joe Root on a drunken night out after Australia had lost in the Champions Trophy at Edgbaston, and with Root clowning about next to his table. Mmm. Bad. I guess.
But Warner is also notably sharp and interesting in press conferences, and far from the thug/doofus identity in person. The first time I saw him in the flesh he was standing on a table at the Feroz Shah Kotla stadium addressing a room filled with at least 500 people after scoring his first hundred in professional cricket for Delhi Daredevils, and you just thought, yes, this is talent, this is the future.
So he proved to be. The final thing about Warner is that we will miss him, Test cricket and the Ashes will miss him. Warner, who was never really old school, who was portrayed initially as a time-traveller from the post-Test future, has turned out to be a keeper of the faith, of the old sense of scale and breadth, heroes and villains, unignorable drama.
Channel 7 produced a hilariously sombre four-minute advert before the Pakistan series, suggesting that you can’t be Australian if you don’t love Test cricket (Amazon has the World Cup rights now) and addressing the summer to come in brave, husky, funereal terms, as though discussing the death of a much-loved dog.
Warner’s goodbye will sell that Test summer, even as the Test summer continues to contract. There are so many bad guys in sport these days, on a sliding scale from Tom Harrison to Aramco. For all his flaws Warner has an unlikely purity even in his villain persona. Will that space ever really be filled again?
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