In September 2013, David Warner was axed from Australia’s one-day team.

He’d been dropped from the Test side earlier that year – after allegedly throwing a punch at England batsman Joe Root in a Birmingham pub – and the runs, which had once flowed so freely from his flashing blade, had dried up.

At the start of the Australian summer of 2013/14 — an Ashes summer — Warner’s calendar year averages read: 26.12 in Tests and 20.75 in one-day internationals.

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And then he started the domestic summer with one-day scores of four, a duck and 17 for New South Wales.

His chances of playing in the home Ashes series – already slim – were receding with each passing innings.

Trent Woodhill, Warner’s good friend and former batting coach, happened to see his eight-ball duck against Victoria up close as he was an assistant coach at the Bushrangers.

What he saw alarmed him.

“I just felt for the guy,” Woodhill said.

“I saw a friend, a work colleague, a guy I’ve spent a lot of time with, who wasn’t doing the things that I knew that he used to do easily and do well.”

A meeting was swiftly arranged between Woodhill, Warner and his manager.

Woodhill when assistant coach of New Zealand – one of several cricket roles he has had. Photo: Getty

Woodhill recalls: “All we did was have a long conversation … we probably spoke for two hours and we got back and just re-visited – more so the mental side of it – what he did well and we started working together again.

“It was more a case of me just … turning a page backwards back to where [he] was [before] … inevitably with … these types of players, it’s just reminding them what they do well and make sure that they can repeat that.”

By “these types of players”, Woodhill means instinctive, naturally attacking batsmen, such as Warner and his other well-known former charge, Steve Smith.

Woodhill felt that, under the previous Australian coaching regime headed by South African Mickey Arthur, Warner had been (well-intentionally) imbued with a problematic “mindset” whereby his first thought “was to get his defence in order and get into his innings then look to attack”.

“To me, that defeats his natural instincts and his natural instinct is to attack,” he said.

“And when he looks to attack, he’s in a really good defensive position because he lets balls go late, he can play late, so he plays the swinging ball later, he moves his feet – I’m not saying he’s a big mover of his feet, but he moves his body well.”

The appointments of Darren Lehmann (Australia head coach) and Michael Di Venuto (batting coach) in 2013 made a difference.

Australia’s talented – but then-unfulfilled at Test level – young batsmen were given the freedom to be themselves, to trust their natural instincts.

Woodhill praised Di Venuto for “want[ing] to understand what made these guys tick so that he could help them bring out the best in themselves, rather than trying to change them”.

Warner averaged 36.86 from 22 Tests – in which he had scored three centuries – before his Sydney meeting with Woodhill.

Immediately after, he reeled off four dominant domestic hundreds in the space of a month to earn his spot in Australia’s Test XI for the Ashes summer, in which he smashed 523 runs at 58.11.

Now, from 40 Tests, he has 12 tons and a much healthier average of 46.86.

Warner goes for all-out attack

This success has been achieved by keeping things simple and enabling Warner to trust his own natural, attacking instincts as a batsman.

“Now,” Woodhill explained, when they chat about batting, “things are short and sharp and sweet” with “reminders and cues from both of us … it’s always stripping everything back and just going back to the simple success of his [natural] mindset and technique”.

Warner in one of his early Twenty20 innings for Australia. Photo: Getty

It’s no secret that Warner was blessed with rare cricketing and athletic talent.

What is perhaps less well-known is how hard he has worked.

In an almost three-year gap from his thrilling Twenty20 international debut – in which he hit a 43-ball 89 against South Africa – to his Test debut, Warner worked diligently on aspects of his game that few batsmen before him had.

He improved his running technique by hiring renowned sprint coach Roger Fabri.

And he puts himself through punishing early-morning fitness sessions with his personal trainer Wayne Geber, and his wife Candice Falzon, a professional ironwoman.

Thus, it is no accident that, whenever a ball pierces the Australian slips cordon, Warner, turning and gliding across the field from his station at gully or fourth slip, is generally the first to reach the ball before it hits the boundary.

“The thing about Davey,” Woodhill observed, “is that he’s very cluey, he’s very aware of what he needs and what works.

“He’s worked at becoming a better athlete, and becoming stronger mentally and becoming better and more proficient as a batsman.”

Even his most outrageously heterodox natural abilities, such as the power to fluently switch-hit, are refined through hard work and practice.

Some years ago, Warner and Woodhill were having a practice session at an empty SCG.

They had, Woodhill recalls, “a really good session”. At the end of it, Warner “started batting right-handed” so that he could “work on … playing different shots”.

A small bunch of kids and their dads wandered into the ground. They marvelled at the compact, right-handed batsman creaming the ball to all parts of the ground.

Before long, one of the boys asked his dad: “Is that David Warner?”

The dad replied: “No, that can’t be Davey Warner because he’s right-handed.

“He’s a good player though. I wonder who he is?”