Warner is now in South Africa, where Australia’s only warm-up game before four Test matches constitutes his formal time off. Typically, he announced he was still keen to run the drinks as 12th man. Casting back a year, when two home Twenty20 Internationals against Sri Lanka clashed with a Test in India, he voiced his dissatisfaction at having to miss any match on the basis of scheduling. He always wants in. There is no blaming a 31-year-old at the peak of his powers wanting to play constantly. Aged between 30 and 35, Ricky Ponting averaged 57 in Tests, Steve Waugh 55 and Matthew Hayden 58. But could it go wrong? Chris Rogers, who was Warner’s opening partner on Australia’s last Test tour to South Africa in 2014, certainly hopes not but can see the risks of constant action. “He is only coming into what should be his best years,” the veteran of 25 Tests told The Sunday Age, “but the constant grind might fast-track not only his development but his burnout.” In fairness to Warner, he understood this when reflecting on his aberrant lean stretch in the 50-over fixtures following the Ashes win, attributing his ODI failings to mental fatigue. He acknowledged, too, that those games may have been the right time to have taken a proper holiday, but qualified that it was a lot easier to observe that in hindsight. Instead, he took two days off in Sydney catching up with his Twenty20 charges in New Zealand. That was his lot. David Warner looked cooked late in the season. Credit:AAP

The good news for Warner is that he’s returning to a place of happy memories. Four years ago, he was the standout player of an epic series where Australia briefly went top of the world under Michael Clarke, the opener rattling off 543 runs at 90.5 with three pulsating centuries. According to Rogers, in their two-year union at the top of the list, his associate was never better. “He’s been exceptional in Australia, but in that series, he led from the front in tough conditions and circumstances.” The retired opener also credits Warner as having played a major hand saving his own Test career at the midway point of that series by smashing Morne Morkel out of the attack at a time he felt certain the imposing South African was going to sort him out with the ball swinging reverse. “Morkel sent down two balls in a row about waist high that Davey muscled through mid-wicket,” he recalls. “The next two were in the same area, but he gave himself room and slapped them through cover point. With that, he was taken off. It was as good as batting as I’ve ever seen in one over. It helped me get that hundred and my career continued.” Then at Cape Town, everything was on the line. A deadlocked ledger, a fast-bowling barrage that broke Clarke’s shoulder, and brewing angst both on and off the field. Warner responded with rapid twin centuries that belied all that was going on around him.

“He was fired up in the last Test and was almost unstoppable,” Rogers says. “He was on top of his game and wanted everyone to know. It was incredible to watch.” That was Warner’s 30th Test. He left with eight tons and returns with 21 and as the ICC’s fifth-ranked Test batsman. But even with that experience, he knows this time it will be harder. “They're going to be smarter and work out where to bowl to me,” he said during the week, citing also the edge the world-class Proteas seam attack had over him in Australia the previous time they met. “I'm prepared for what they bring and I've just got to make sure I'm in the right mental state.” Loading

Those final words point to how important Warner considers his preparation above the shoulders. Specifically, to him this means decluttering his busy mind to commit it fully to the task of batting. It becomes a bigger part of the opener’s story each year. Meditation makes a contribution, a mind coach too. Then there is his batting coach, Trent Woodhill, the man he says can switch his brain on “straight away” when losing form or confidence. The simple message from this long-term confidant to Warner ahead of this blue chip series is that his pupil must remember his strength is approaching every ball from an aggressive starting point. He wants him to ignore any alternative suggestion that he should slip into a more conservative space. It is this kind of serious contemplation that has impressed Rogers just as much as Warner’s work ethic, making him not only one of the game’s most accomplished players but of the most interesting as well. “Davey is a much deeper thinker about his game than people would possibly know. So will he attack on what might be tough wickets or back his ability to take it deep? I’d love to know what he’s thinking.”