David Warner’s charmed Ashes innings reflects career defined by the unlikely | Geoff Lemon

He was warming up for the series, out of tune, unconvincing, and still made one of the match’s defining scores

There is, no one will be surprised to hear, a cussedness to David Warner. A stubbornness born from a deep well of confidence that goes undiluted by criticism, by the doubt of others, or even by the realities in front of him. In part, like many top athletes, it is fuelled by those doubts, a pushing back against them. For the most part though, with Warner, it seems to be innate, a refusal to accept as real the limits that others might.

It was like this when Warner was picked for Australia’s T20 team having never even played first-class cricket for New South Wales. He couldn’t succeed, but he did. And the same when he was a T20 player coming into Test cricket, a gamble that could never come off, except it did. Hundreds flowed. They were mostly short and fast, showing that he couldn’t bat long, except he started to do just that. Then after his sandpaper ban, and his 2019 Ashes disaster, there was no way he could succeed as much as before, except he did. A triple hundred, an Allan Border medal, the unlikely achieved with typical Warner ostentation.

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