Home is where the heart is for Australia, and with Steve Smith and a maturing David Warner on board, England have their work cut out, reckons Jarrod Kimber

I f David Warner had thrown his ill-timed punch against Joe Root in Australia, instead of an Australia-themed bar, things could have been different. Because Australian cricketers don’t make many mistakes at home.

In 2013 Warner was this incredible force of nature. He was nicknamed the bull; you felt Australian cricket strapping itself in for a rodeo ride on his back. It was never going to be a smooth ride: Warner was feisty on the field, as well as off it. He was as loose in his behaviour as he was outside off stump. It almost seemed fitting that the franchise star caught got in a franchise bar. Here was the marquee player, the one that Cricket Australia had pushed the hardest, and was now missing Ashes Tests because of his behaviour. The more significant problem would turn out to be not the punch, but that, to use Australian misogynist sports vernacular, at home Warner played like Tarzan, on the road he played like Jane.

And it wasn’t just Warner who was bad on the road; it seemed that the moment Australia left their great brown land they deflated. The year 2013 was a perfect example of it. In the days after the punch, as Australian cricket was imploding and stand-in captain George Bailey was caught in the middle of a crisis, actual skipper Michael Clarke was nowhere to be seen. It was said that his back was so bad he couldn’t travel from London, where he was getting treatment, to Birmingham. Though it turned out that Clarke’s back was good enough to go to a charity game (with a bunch of celebrity pals) outside of London.