David Warner exit leaves Australian Test team looking balanced in India

S o David Warner is heading home, arm busted and ambitions dented but that radiation-proof determination surely intact. Anyone who knows the feeling of broken bones could see what had happened as soon as he was hit by a Mohammed Siraj short ball during the Delhi Test. The way he yelped and flinched when the physio gently squeezed his arm reflects exactly that bright flash of pain that seems to start in the marrow and end between the temples.

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It was strange then that the initial response from Australia’s captain and coach was that he might recover for the third Test a little more than a week away. The elbow fracture sustained is small – at the team hotel on Tuesday night Warner sat comfortably and only wore a light compression bandage around the injury. But even a tiny fracture hampers all movement anywhere near it. It radiates discomfort. It throbs like a bad tooth. He was never going to be able to hit a cricket ball so soon.Nursing him through the series might have made sense had Warner been the gun player in the line-up blazing runs, but this felt more like making a point that he remains firmly the first-choice opener. Now team management gets a convenient chance to try Travis Head at the top without being seen to have made a definitive call on Warner. The latter’s declining returns have been talked about plenty: his fighting 200 against South Africa’s pace in the Boxing Day Test ensured he would join this India tour, but it is also his only time past 50 in his last 15 innings. His career has never seen a streak that quiet.His two cheap dismissals in