KEN PIESSE’S biography of David Warner is fast becoming a Christmas bestseller. Far from a hagiography, it tells the truth and nothing but the truth of the wild child who continues to corner the headlines.
David Warner wants to go out a hero but there will be booing for him from Perth to Melbourne and Sydney during the first of the summer’s Test series.
Many have still not forgiven him for bringing cricket to its knees in Cape Town in 2018.
They were unimpressed by his understated, underwhelming apologies afterwards.
As I fulfill media commitments around the publication of David Warner, The Bull, daring to be different, it’s clear that many remain permanently scarred by the biggest Australian cricket headliner since Shane Warne.
Unlike Warnie who kept on putting his foot in it big time but kept smiling, apologising and appealing to the Australian public to accept his foibles, Warner has never had the same charisma – or public rapport.
He’s street smart but his apologies haven’t been as genuine as those made by Steve Smith and Cameron Bancroft, who was the patsy in the whole sorry affair.
As I explain in The Bull, one of the Cricket Australia sponsors rang chief executive James Sutherland saying that the year bans were too lenient. He wanted them all to be banned for life and when they didn’t, he withdrew his company’s six million sponsorship.
One silly, insanely stupid act created chaos – with resignations everywhere – and it’s one of the reasons why this latest book of mine is in such Christmas demand.
I take you behind the scenes and share with the readers exactly what happened. And how ‘Captain Calamity’ Steve Smith told Warner: ‘I don’t want to know anything about it.’
Like Greg Chappell with the underarm all those years back, Smith wasn’t fit to be Australia’s captain.
Had then-coach Darren Lehmann known about the plan, he would have stopped it, there and then. He’s too good a cricket person to have condoned it.
Despite a Test average of just 22 this calendar year, Warner’s World Cup doings were enough to see him selected again for a farewell summer.
I for one hope that he does well enough to be an automatic selection for the summer’s two holiday Tests from Boxing Day.
There has been no finer multi-format player in Australian cricket. Or one as provocative or as polarising.
Ken Piesse is Australian cricket’s master storyteller. Limited edition hardback copies of his 87th book are available from cricketbooks.com.au
KEN PIESSE has covered cricket and football for more than 30 years in Melbourne. Despite that setback, Ken has written, published and edited 86 books on cricket and AFL football to become Australian sport’s most prolific author.
His latest cricket book is David Warner, The Bull, Daring to be Different with Wilkinson Publishing, out now
www.cricketbooks.com.au
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