He's a genius. A cheat. Temperamental. Mainly a genius. I'm glad he got his hat back

Here we are as David Warner plays his last ever Sydney Test.

The man is a genius. A cheat. Temperamental. Mainly a genius. And now he's going out on his own terms.

But there was a slight hiccup on the way.

Warner made a public plea on Instagram after his baggy green cap went missing from his luggage, a backpack inside a bigger Australian cricket bag, en route from Melbourne to Sydney, after the Boxing Day win. I'd like to blame Qantas but I don't have enough evidence. Mind you, by all appearances, this is even more nefarious than Qantas. Sadly, Qantas seems to have blindspots. D'oh.

He said on Instagram: "A couple of days ago, our bags got freighted via Qantas. We've gone through CCTV footage, they've got some blind spots apparently. We spoke to the Quay West Hotel, who we absolutely trust and have gone through their cameras. No-one's come into our rooms."

Even if you don't love cricket, you would have to understand how awful this is.

It's a disaster. Imagine if your lucky undies weren't clean on the day of a big interview. It would totally put you off your game. And these caps are more powerful than blessed underpants. These caps have sat on Warner's head over hundreds of kilometres running between wickets and winning. Sure, they were also the caps during Sandpapergate but, you know, I've practically forgotten what that was about as Davey lines us for his farewell tour.

I was totally hoping the ransom note would arrive before he strode on to the pitch late Wednesday but no, he was wearing a brand new cap.

Even the Prime Minister became involved. Anthony Albanese joined calls for Warner's baggy green to be returned immediately.

"Dave Warner has represented Australia on more than 100 occasions, the baggy green hat belongs to him and it should be returned."

Davey's dad called the thieves scumbags. Too true. And even the Pakistan captain, someone who has every reason to hope Warner plays badly, has called for the caps.

"There should be a country-wide search right now from the Australian government. We might need the best of detectives to get that back," he said.

"I hope they find it. It's the most precious thing for any cricketer, and I hope David Warner gets it back."

Now he has! But when something really important goes missing, we all go wild.

A couple of weeks back I got so invested in a child's lost toy that I got involved. Kid leaves precious monkey in toilet block in Wang. Kid goes to Canberra. Mother of kid puts call out on Facebook. Another mother retrieves Monkey. I posted the original story on a Facebook page where another mother volunteered to get it back to the kid in Canberra.

So I thought I'd join a memorabilia Facebook page - to have a sniff around. Haha. Clean as a whistle but also even worse than Facebook market place. Why would you buy old buckles and tatty posters? Why?

Why am I so invested in this? Four reasons. One, I love cricket. Two, I lost a gold necklace of my father's not long after he died so am stupidly sentimental. Three, Warner married Candice. And four, he deals with trolls in a way which few of us can.

Trolls first. He told the Sydney Morning Herald's redoubtable Andrew Webster last week that he takes online trolls to the pub.

"I've always said to people, 'If you're going to pot shot me on Twitter behind a keyboard, come and have a beer'," he says. "I've done that with some people before and they've been taken aback by it. I speak to them on a weekly basis. I've reached out to a few people in England and had beers with them. It's important to reach out to people who are abusive because you want to know why."

Real life interactions with trolls can be really useful. I tracked down one to the cafe where he worked with his wife. When I phoned, she asked me why I wanted to speak to him. So I explained her husband had been abusing me vilely for months. Never happened again.

But only the Warners of the world can risk meeting with abusers. Could get scary and I'm not up for that until I'm 170cms (see, not even that ambitious) and can bench press 100kg.

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But my other reason for fandom is his wife, Candice, nee Falzon. She's a former professional ironwoman (150-to-200-metre run, 300-metre swim, 500-metre board paddle and 600-metre ski paddle. Sometimes six or seven events a day). Exhausted and impressed just thinking about that. She competed for 14 years straight in SLSA competitions. Competed in the Coolangatta Gold. For the record, some of the Coolangatta Gold is running on sand. And in 2007, Falzon had a toilet cubicle encounter with (at that time) the hottest man in rugby league, Sonny Bill Williams; and was seen, just three hours later, with his teammate Ben Roberts. But in 2018, Quinton de Kock, South Africa's wicketkeeper, makes some pathetic remarks about the toilet cubicle incident to Warner and these two idiots get into a scuffle on a stairwell.

As I said at the time, here is a woman in charge of her own destiny, shagging a hot bloke. I gave him excellent advice: "So, David Warner, the next time someone sledges you about the sexual history of Candice Falzon, repeat this: 'Yeah, she did all that. All that. And afterwards, after all those amazing athletes, she chose me. I'm bloody lucky'."

And we've been bloody lucky, too. Thanks Dave. You've been a blast. Now your job is to support Candice, Ivy, Indi and Isla. Good luck. I hope they are cricketers and not ironwomen. That sounds way too hard.

We had no need to rustle up a reward for anyone leading to the finding of Dave's cap. Somehow it has materialised. And my Choose Your Own Adventure ending never came to pass. I imagined a secret streaker invading the pitch as Warner celebrated his second innings score of a century.

Happy for that to happen. Cap or no cap.