Mates, not friends: Warner and Smith’s new reality

It was apparent from the start of the World Cup that David Warner and Steve Smith had found a way to get along.

The repaired bond Steve Smith, left, David Warner helped them during the World Cup and the Ashes tour

How would David Warner and Steve Smith get on when reunited? Could they work together again? We know they pulled it off, but how they did it is only starting to emerge.

The greatest issue facing Australian cricket 12 months ago was reintroducing the pair to a group they had been exiled from, a group that would have to make room for them and one that had been on a long, painful journey in that time.

More important, however, was their own relationship which was clearly strained by the events of Cape Town.

Smith gives some hint of his approach in the new Amazon Prime documentary series The Test when he says at an early meeting that there’s “a difference between mates and friends” after the group has visited Gallipoli.

Warner offers that he is “getting better as a team person”.

Subsequent shots of the pair genuinely enjoying each other’s success on the field suggest they found a way to navigate towards a comfortable place. Warner is ecstatic on the balcony when Smith begins to peel off centuries in the Ashes. There is no sign of him brooding on his own poor form or resenting anyone else’s success.

His concern when Smith is struck at Lord’s is apparent, saying later he thought “not again”. Warner was playing when Phillip Hughes was struck.

Bringing Warner and Smith back into the fold was a project embarked on by a number of senior people at Cricket Australia in the months before they joined the group for the World Cup.

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Warner made note of it after rising from the table he shared with Smith at the Australian Cricket Awards to accept his Allan Border Medal.

“Belinda Clark, Kevin Roberts, Justin Langer, really worked your backsides off to reintegrate the three of us back into the cricket family,” he said. “The work that you did behind the scenes, to do everything you could to get us back in amongst the guys, take us to Dubai, that was absolutely ­fantastic,” he said.

There is little else shown of the reintegration process in the documentary series but it was apparent from the start of the World Cup that Warner and Smith had found a way, and perhaps it was as mates rather than friends.

The concept of mateship is difficult territory. Former prime minister John Howard and poet Les Murray tripped themselves up when they attempted to spell it out in a proposed constitutional preamble at the end of last century, but its essence is impressed on the players as they are guided solemnly through the history of the Gallipoli campaign.

The scenes in The Test are moving and the players appropriately moved, the production deftly avoiding any sense of jingoism.

The bonding holds them in good stead when parts of the ­English crowd launch their ugly and sustained abuse of the pair during the Ashes. The scale and volume of it is confronting. Ricky Ponting says at one stage he wants to “jump the fence and shut a few of them up”.

Smith’s fierce concentration on the task at hand is apparent in the first Test when Nathan Lyon joins him and suggests they get 10 more to push the score on to 250.

The spinner says the former skipper responded: “Shut the f..k up and let me bat, I’ll get it to 300.” He got them to 284.