The Bull stands up in baking furnace of the MCG

David Warner celebrates reaching his double century at the MCG. Picture: Getty Images.

He’s back. David Warner will insist that he was never away. And in a sense he is right. In any career, particularly that of an opening bat, there will be undulations; at 36, mind you, one is always entitled to wonder how many more ups can be expected.

Three years had passed since the last time that leaping Warner celebration had been seen on a Test field, yet the milestone had somehow seemed foreordained from the instant he burst from the blocks on Boxing Day.

“I know when I’m at my best, I’m taking the bowlers on,” he had said before the game, and matching deeds to words has been a lifelong habit.

There was the context of Sandpapergate’s recrudescence; there was the context of Cricket Australia’s feeble mismanagement of his code of conduct appeal. Somehow, Warner is never just, y’know, making runs. A bigger point is always being elaborated. And, given the occasion of his century of Tests, this innings had a longer arc than usual.

Fully 14 years had elapsed since Warner’s first proclamation of his talent, on this ground, against this opposition.

So heterodox was his method back then that a newspaper front page the following day showed a photograph of him in action alongside the image of a baseball slugger.

The other 21 players in that match are long retired.

And so, in a way, is that particular Warner. His great triumph has been accommodating himself to Test match rhythms without sacrifice of individuality.

This presents now mainly in his mannerisms, which, after their own fashion, are as abundant and idiosyncratic as Steve Smith’s: the callisthenic limbo after taking guard; the tidy furl of the bat after each stroke; the pedantic fiddle with the velcro of his gloves and occasional jog on the spot between deliveries as though to decant off the surplus energy; the way he lowers his head as he accelerates between wickets, legs blurring like the roadrunner’s; the way he slides into the creases, like a swimmer taking tumble turns.

How hard, still, is it for bowlers to find a containing length to him: stooping low, he can cut deliveries that taller players might defend or leave. Perhaps his best shot yesterday came early: a sumptuous square drive, back knee on the ground, off Lungi Ngidi. The most emphatic statement came at the expense of the bowler who’s had his number half a dozen times in Test cricket: 58 from 60 deliveries by Kagiso Rabada.

The innings’ stickiest phase came around the hour mark when Anrich Nortje, pushing the speedo to 150km/h and more, challenged Warner’s hook shot with two men back, and collected his helmet, the deflection clearing first slip on the way for four leg byes – for the game a short interruption; for the batter, a memento mori.

Soon after, Warner, typically keen to rejoin battle and regain strike, sought a second from an overthrow. Marnus Labuschagne, too far past the strikers’ stumps to return realistically for the second, held up his hand, but too late; in the event, effectively starting as the race’s backmarker, he commendably sacrificed himself.

For 10 or so minutes, Warner had to outlast at least his complicity, if not his culpability, in the misunderstanding. The heat was sapping, the glare dazzling, the occasion demanding. Gradually, however, he regained control. As lunch approached, the main danger appeared a growing sense of impunity: on 76 he inside edged an expansive drive; on 87 he missed an impudent back cut; on 90 he dug out a swerving yorker.

Through the final 10 runs, in fact, the Australian rather coasted, accommodated by Elgar’s leaky defensive fields. The shot to reach his century was, at last, pure Warner: a whisk, half-pull, half-glance, all-action, followed by the standard celebrations, expanded here to each quadrant of the ground. Later, after a leg-side reprieve from the less-than-secure Kyle Verreynne, he made a buffet of Ngidi and Keshav Maharaj.

Nortje, it must be said, bowled valiantly all day, clocking breakneck speeds, deserving better than his figures, and than the near calamity in mid-afternoon when Spider cam swooped him like a robot magpie. Nortje brushed off his clonking on the shoulder lightly; Spider cam withdrew, a little sulkily, but lucky to have escaped the fate of the printer in Office Space.

There remains the puzzle of why Warner was recently held in check by the West Indies’ far less formidable attack – how, three weeks ago, on a belting pitch at Adelaide Oval, he played on to Roston Chase, who, let’s be honest, could hardly bowl a hoop down a hill.

Perhaps the Proteas’ greater pace has suited him, generating a headier flow of testosterone and naturally later contact points.

Perhaps it is the sorry unwinding of his leadership ambitions, or even his unconscious co-dependence with critics. It used to be said that Kevin Pietersen’s getting out brought cheer to fans in three countries; with Warner it’s at least two.

Those detractors enjoyed no consolations yesterday, for when Warner gets in, he tends to stay in, with an average century of 174.

A third all-run four took him to 8000 Test runs. A reverse sweep in front of point made him Australia’s seventh-highest run scorer. When he reached his 200, it was out of 307 runs off the bat: a staggering monopoly given the quality of his partners, including Steve Smith, even if the latter was not at his best.

And then, with one bound, he was … retired? Hurt, anyway, let down by a calf that had troubled him through the afternoon. Had he been 199, might he have stayed? In that moment, certainly, Warner looked all his 36 years. Figuratively, though, his step has a new spring.