Warner remains explosive, on and off the field If David Warner is keeping and releasing an Ashes tour diary in time to fill the Christmas stockings, it will make fair reading. The combative Australian batsman has, over the past couple of months, been able to find a headline like England's bowlers have found Shane Watson's front pad. The latest episode - a heated mid-pitch altercation with South African wicketkeeper Thami Tsolekile that required the gloveman to be pulled away by a teammate and umpires to implore calm - would be a mere footnote, though, let alone a full chapter despite the attention it garnered at the weekend. "Great to be back": David Warner. Warner said on Twitter, a medium that has caused him and his family no end of drama itself lately, after the incident in Pretoria created immediate news in the Ashes sphere. Run-ins on a cricket ground - like, regrettably, the bar room - are nothing new for the cricketer from an eastern Sydney housing commission estate. Nicknamed "Bull" he talks a big game out there, much like how he plays it. It does not take a long memory to recall that back in Delhi in March, his most recent Test appearance, he engaged in an exchange of unpleasantries with the feisty Indian all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja while in the field. There was no report of that incident by umpires, as was the case on Saturday, with the officials satisfied none of the alleged sledging by Warner that was said to have sparked the animosity had been worthy of any official action. Reprimanded: Warner addresses his stoush with Joe Root. Darren Lehmann and the rest of the Australian team management, too will almost certainly not bat an eyelid either, let alone give him a clip over the ear. In fact Warner's aggression might well be seen as an attribute badly needed in an Australian team that was walked all over in their 347-run defeat at Lord's. The English, referencing his pair of misdemeanours that landed him twice before Cricket Australia's Code of Behaviour commissioner, fined, suspended and sent off to Africa, largely see Warner as a prat. He is a bit rough round the edges but while an inability to take a backward step proved his undoing in the Birmingham Walkabout it looms as a potential asset for a team searching desperately for a way back into this series. He is due to re-join the Australians when their bus arrives in Manchester on Monday. Regrettable: Looking on during the first Test. "To be around the boys is always great and I can offer a lot of energy to the boys around training," Warner said from South Africa. I know that the guys in the camp at the moment are just fantastic. I've been in touch with a lot of the boys and they're still going very well which is great. Hopefully in the third Test the boys can come out and fire. Whether Warner features at Old Trafford from Thursday is yet to be seen but the 193 he posted for Australia A at Pretoria's LC de Villiers Oval sure makes a strong case. He followed that with 33 in the second innings, during which proceedings with Tsolekile flared up, prompting South African batsman Vaughn van Jaarsveld at one point to haul the keeper away to calm the situation. If Warner does play in Manchester, and that would likely be in the middle order at the expense of an unlucky Phil Hughes, he can expect some provocation from England in the field. Let's face it, they have plenty of material: his brother's public bagging of Watson on Twitter, the part his nightclub punch played in the sacking of Mickey Arthur, his Ashes warm-up hit in distant Zimbabwe. They could even send Joe Root out to short cover wearing a fake beard. But as long as Warner can make a fistful of runs, keeping his fists in his pockets, he and Australia will not care.