There is hope Warner,who did not have his left arm in a sling at the team hotel on Monday,could recover in a week for the third Test starting March 1 in Indore.
“He’s still sore at the moment. We had a meeting just before discussing through this. We’re in no rush to make any decisions at this point in time around Davey,” McDonald said.
“Just seeing how that settles,how functional that is. It will be basically how sore and how functional it is as to what decision we make with him and then the length of the injury.
“There’s some talk the length of injury could be anywhere between a week plus depending how that settles down. There’s a bit of unknown there,I’ll leave that to the medical team and they’ll inform me once they know.”
Travis Head laid strong claims to stay at the top of the order in India with a brisk 43 opening in Warner’s place in the second innings.
“If Dave’s unavailable it would make perfect sense[for him to continue opening],” McDonald said. “We did discuss before coming over here that if we were to lose an opening batter that Trav would be one we’d look to put up there.
“We feel in the subcontinental conditions that he can get off to the fast starts which he showed. I wouldn’t like to draw that back to the home summer.
“I think Aaron Finch was opening in the subcontinent,and opened in Australia,we don’t see him as an opener in all conditions,more subcontinental and in other conditions back to the middle order.”
Asked if Head would move down the order if Warner was fit,McDonald said:“We’ve got all that to work through.”
McDonald said Cameron Green is available but Mitchell Starc is still working to full fitness from his finger injury. Green would likely replace Matthew Renshaw,who has failed in each of his three innings,but McDonald said players would be given chances to improve.
“We don’t want to chop and change for the sake of it,and try to future-proof something for four to five years’ time when the fact of the matter is we want to see if players have learned or grown,” McDonald said.
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“And by chopping and changing that doesn’t give them the opportunity as well. We feel as though there are some players we will back again to go again to show us what they’ve learnt.”
Maxwell was set to play in the India series until he broke his leg at a friend’s 50th birthday party.
“He’s played one game - what did he get,five? He played club cricket and got 61,” McDonald said of Maxwell’s recent return.
“We’ll see how we go. We’ve got the one-day squad that we’ll announce,if he gets through everything that he needs to then he’ll be a starter for that one-day series. Anything forward of that will be discussed.”
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