#INDvAUS: 'Reverend' David Warner finds his zone

After the end of the warm-up game on Sunday, David Warner walked into a room at the Cricket Club of India to address the media wearing a cap that had 'BULL' hand written on the side of it.

Must be an old cap, though.

Warner's no longer the 'Bull', as he was known so famously over the years. The nickname changed to the 'Reverend' last year, for his teammates reckoned the 'Bull' had been tamed a little bit.

The Australian opener isn't quite a walking fireball now, who would sledge his opponents on the field at the drop of a hat or punch England's Joe Root off it.

A lot of water has flown under the bridge since.

The fireball has become ice cool. He now merely flashes a smile when his opponents sledge him on the field, and plays with his daughters off it.

But that's just one aspect of Warner's paradigm shift. For a large part of his career, the 30-year-old used his bat more to try and tear the leather off the ball than kiss it gently. He was a king in the shorter formats right from his debut in 2009, but was a pawn in Test cricket for a couple of years since wearing the Baggy Green in 2011.

It showed when he played Test cricket in India the last time. In the four Tests that Australia played in 2012, Warner scored just 195 runs at an average of 24 with a couple of half-centuries.

In the last three years, Warner has scored 12 Test centuries in 33 outings, and has averaged in excess of 40 each year. The southpaw has still batted like a breeze in these three years – striking at around 80 – but has also learnt the art of weathering storms.

Thus, as the Aussies gear up for another tough challenge of facing the Indians in four Tests starting on Thursday, Virat Kohli & Co are likely to spend most time discussing Warner than any other Australian batsmen in their team meetings.

The pawn's become the king in white flannels as well.

"The last time we played here, it was my first time, so it was tough. It was challenging. For me as a player, I really learnt a lot about myself back then," Warner said on Sunday. "I was a bit younger back then, and a bit childish in a way," he said candidly.

"I've learned a lot in the four years since then. You've got to have your plans in place, and you've got to stick to them. The biggest challenge here is being mentally fresh, you've got to have mental toughness. You've got to be willing to grind it out and bat time here," he added.

The man who always batted in overdrive now understands that he'll need to pull back at times in the series, especially when the likes of Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja are in operation.

"That's probably one thing that I learnt from last time. The ball is going to get soft fast, but you're going to have to assess the conditions. They're going to bowl tight lines early on with the ball swinging, and then you've got to assess.

"Whether it's letting the ball come to you or rotating the strike, attacking or defending the spinners. You've got to have that mindset, and you've got to be positive with that. You can't second yourself, because if you second guess yourself, you're out," he said.

Ask the 'Bull' about engaging in a war of words with Kohli on the pitch a couple of years ago, and he'd probably be the first one to do it. But this is the 'Reverend' we're talking about.

"For us, it's about going out there and playing our brand of cricket. Virat Kohli is one of those players if you niggle at him, it either makes him better or if you get under his skin, he'll probably get even better. He's a world-class player at the moment.

"So for us, it's about going out and playing the best cricket we can. We're not going out there to entertain the idea of sledging or banter. It's going out there and playing a great brand of cricket and making sure it's in the spirit of the game," Warner said.

The man's surely changed. The batsman's surely changed. About time his cap does.