Warner finds new challenge under lights

The manner in which David Warner is seeing and dealing with cricket balls at the moment, it’s difficult to imagine their colour, shape, size or flight path could have him despatch them with anything but the middle of his bat.

With centuries from three of his past five Test innings and an average of almost 130 across that time, Warner would seemingly have few troubles mastering the vagaries of even "a fuzzy pink golf ball".

Which is how one senior Australia batsman described his encounter with the magenta Kookaburra – that will be used in the first day-night Test match starting in Adelaide on Friday - in a recent Sheffield Shield match.

But as if to exemplify just how the most fundamental change to the way Test cricket is played since the protective helmet was pioneered more than 30 years ago might change the game, Warner misjudged a regulation outfield catch during a fielding drill this afternoon.

The pink ball duly framed against a cobalt blue Adelaide summer sky, with only the blazing sun to act as hindrance.

With the pain that immediately pulsed through his recently fractured left thumb briefly putting his involvement in the history making event in question.

Warner underwent an examination and some treatment in the team dressing room before taking to the practice nets, where he faced spinner Nathan Lyon and a few local net bowlers in keeping with his usual pre-match preparations.

However, the Test game as Warner has come to know it since donning a Baggy Green Cap for the first time in 2011 will be potentially turned on its head when the third Test against New Zealand gets underway at a time of day traditionally set aside for a mid-afternoon drinks break.

Even though cool, cloudy conditions are forecast for Adelaide on Friday, the assistance they might have provided for seam bowlers on the first morning of a Test will be hours gone when either Mitchell Starc or Tim Southee takes the new pink ball in hand.

And the traditional role of openers to see off that danger period will be inverted, with the new hour of optimum hazard now identified as the time around twilight, when the artificial lights take over and the atmospherics mysteriously change.

So while the usual rhythm of a day’s Test cricket heralds caution, consolidation and then cashing-in as bowlers and fielders flag at the end of a long, hot day, the template for a pink ball Test might instead become gritty in the first session, get on with it in the second and get the other mob in at the end.

Especially when the prospect of facing swing bowlers as accomplished as Starc and Black Caps’ pair Southee and Trent Boult makes the second new-ball in the day’s last hour potentially more daunting than tackling the first at the game’s genesis. 

"We know early on their (New Zealand’s) key is swing bowling, and if it happens to be swinging around here you’ve got to see that spell of bowling out like we have done in the last two Tests,” Warner said when asked how batting strategies might change with the hue and nature of the ball.

"I think that’s what we (Australia) have done well as a top six batting unit. 

"We’ve put on the runs that we have, we’ve actually been able to see through that spell and wait for the bad balls and that’s something Steve (Smith, Australia captain) wanted us to do as a top six unit was to score all the runs

"So we’ve got to keep trying to score the bulk of the runs, and see out that first session."

But Warner’s two innings in his only competitive pink ball hit-out – for New South Wales against South Australia in Adelaide last month – did not include batting under lights as he was dismissed for 77 and 30, both times in the bright golden afternoon sunlight.

WATCH: Warner faces up to the pink ball in Adelaide

"In an ideal world, I would have loved to have batted at night time," Warner said of that introductory experience.

"But that’s why you have training at night, to practice."

If any player was to indifferently shrug his shoulders about the fresh challenges that will arrive with a different ball under changed playing conditions, then it would be 29-year-old Warner who is currently enjoying the form run of a cricket life.

Not just his, but many that have gone before him.

Of Australians to have played 20 Tests or more, only Don Bradman (36.25) and Smith (17.91) boast a higher proportion of centuries per Test innings than Warner’s current benchmark of 17.65.

Which places him seventh on a list that features all-time-great names Headley, Walcott, Sutcliffe and Weekes, and ahead of contemporary legends like Tendulkar, Lara, Sangakkara, de Villiers and Williamson.

And over the past two years, nobody – not even the prolific Smith – has scored more Test runs than Australia’s new vice-captain.

WATCH: Warner smacks maiden Test double-century

But the new era of Test cricket won’t alter some entrenched behaviour, such as Warner’s preference to defer to his opening partner when it comes to facing up to the first ball of an innings.

Warner took strike in his first two Tests when he opened the batting in partnership with the late Phillip Hughes, and more recently when Shaun Marsh filled in for Chris Rogers at the top of the order in the West Indies last June.

But in between those times, Warner and Ed Cowan would alternate as to who took the first ball and in the productive 22-match pairing with Rogers it was the more senior partner who did the duty while Warner habitually headed to the non-striker’s end.

And even though history remembers that the historic first delivery sent down under lights in Australia came from Len Pascoe at Barry Richards in a World Series Cricket one-day match at Melbourne’s VFL Park in January 1978, Warner won’t be seeking out a similar memento moment.

Not at this stage anyway.

“No definitely not,” Warner said when asked if he would alter the tradition he established with Rogers and has since continued with Joe Burns to forego the option of facing the opening ball of an innings.

"It’s just one of those things that sometimes I do go out there and face the first ball, sometimes I don’t. 

"But I might have to think about that."