FALL & REDEMPTION

BEFORE they were flung from the Tarpeian Rock that awaits all traitors to Australian sport, they were champions of our cause. Warner had won many a notorious battle to get to the pinnacle, the only giveaway his partiality to a dash of infamy with his fame. After stumbling around briefly on the scree as a kind of all-rounder, Smith swerved suddenly toward the summit in pursuit of a singular runaway talent.

At the time of their fall from these Olympian heights they were the team’s leaders, Smith officially, Warner by dint of his accomplishments at the most challenging of posts and his repression of an urge to badger opposition – a role that was bestowed upon him as surely as the captaincy was assigned Smith.

He was given the vice-captaincy as a reward for his restraint but, it turns out, the will to crush anyone who presumed to threaten his stronghold never left him. That stronghold, populated by friends and teammates, had been jealously fortified when he met, and married, the love of his life, Candice Falzon. In Cape Town, his opponents and their supporters, perhaps recalling his previous visit when he was lead attack dog in the slavering Aussie pack, went straight for the inner sanctum of his personal life.

Smith had been a good captain. Leadership came naturally to him only when it came by force of example. Four centuries in his first series at the helm delayed any questions about his suitability, and for four years, his achievement was incontestable. We couldn’t distinguish the dancer from the dance, the preacher from the practice. He’d show up before time, stay longer at training and reap abundantly out in the middle. There was undeniable integrity to it.

Smith has a certain big picture. It’s bloody big, as they sing in the beer ad. The bigger the picture, the more numerous the particulars. Important details shrink to minutiae. Interpersonal dynamics became invisible. He genuinely didn’t apprehend the seriousness of the situation when he saw Warner, bitter and seething, conspiring