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IT HAS fallen - surprise, surprise - to Davey Warner to provide a clue or two to what the Australian team really thinks about the shock mid-series retirement of one of England's most senior cricketers, Graeme Swann.
"It's different ... it's like a little bit of a knockout blow," the outspoken opening batsman said at the MCG on Christmas Eve.
"It's weird with Trotty going home and now Swanny retiring. We look at that and don't know what to think in a way - but credit to us, we're playing good cricket."
That's as close as anyone in the Oz camp has come to expressing a sense of triumph at having battered a key opponent into submission long before the fight is finished, which is hard for the English camp to deny with their matchwinning off-spinner reduced to seven wickets at 80 apiece.
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Swann's unexpected exit, which follows the earlier withdrawal of senior batsman Jonathon Trott with psychological problems after the first Test, has attracted plenty of acidic criticism from Australian fans despite his explanation that his body is simply no longer up to the task of delivering 70 or 80 overs across a gruelling five-day match.
Swann's explosive barb about some players - whom he declined to identify, even by nationality - being up themselves didn't help.
"Who cares what he thinks? He has left his mates for dead and run away. Weak as!" was one tweet that thudded into my in-box, encapsulating a widespread sentiment.
Despite the willing sledging that has been a much-debated feature of this series - or at least the early part of it, before it became obvious that the scoreboard was going to speak more loudly than anyone - the Australians have been mostly careful not to bad-mouth a player they do respect now that they have put him down for the count.
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To a man, they have been generous in their applause for a fine career, which Swann certainly did deliver with 255 wickets in 60 Tests making him England's sixth most successful bowler, fast or slow, in history.
But there is no doubt they were surprised to see him walk away as if there was nothing left to play for.
"I couldn't believe it," skipper Michael Clarke said in his column this week.
"(He is) the one player I am most surprised won't be stepping out to play against us."
Warner provided Swann with his last two wickets, but only after giving him plenty of stick on the way to making 60 and 112 in Perth.
He said he heard the retirement news as he boarded a flight to Melbourne for the Test.
"At first it was a bit of a surprise," he said. "As he said, he came out here to try to win four (Ashes series) in a row.
"From our point of view it was a bit of a shock to the system, but he's had a fantastic career and its been a privilege to play against him.
"I wish him all the best in his retirement.
"As we have all said, we don't really care about what happens in the English setup - we have to keep playing our brand of cricket."
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Warner's turbulent year, which has involved a twitter row with senior journalists, a physical altercation with England batsman Joe Root in a bar and a rebuke for failing to keep an appointment to play club cricket, is ending in a good place, with 454 runs at 91.4 in the series so far.
This will be his third Boxing Day Test and he is yet to make a Test ton at the MCG, where he first made his name with an explosive 89 in a Twenty20 match against South Africa in January 2009.
There was a huge crowd that day and Boxing Day will probably bring an even bigger one.
"You've got to pinch yourself really because you don't get 90,000 people every day of your life," he said.
Time was when the adrenalin surge created by such an audience might have been enough to see him cut loose regardless of the situation or the quality of the bowling.
But maturity has kicked in on and off the field, it seems.
"I've started to learn my game a lot more and it is helping me out," he said.
"It has a lot to do with the way I've been playing. I'm still at the crease longer, watching the ball harder, feeling much more comfortable at the crease.
"You've got to treat every ball that comes at you as if it is the first one and then try to play the role you can for the team."
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With comparisons being made in the past few days about Australia's pace attack and South Africa's - bowling coach Craig McDermott claims his troops have the edge on Dale Steyn and Co - Warner was asked if he was already switched on by the next big challenge.
"Not at all," he said.
"I'm thinking a bout today's training session rather than Boxing Day. We live in the present, not in the past, and that's what I'm focused on.
"I probably did get too far ahead of myself and was playing each innings in my head 15 times. I've worked out the way to keep thinking about now rather than a few days time."
Few players would be more acutely aware than Warner of how quickly, and profoundly, things can change in cricket. Fortunately for him, the pendulum has been swinging in nothing but the right direction as his year of living dangerously comes to a more peaceful end.
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