The long, twisting road of Cameron White

A state captain at 20, he was briefly touted as a successor to Shane Warne's leg spin throne. It soon emerged that he was more a batsman than a bowler, but then it was his bowling that earned him a brief Test stint in 2008. Within 12 months of that series in India he'd become a leading ODI batsman. He became Australia's Twenty20 captain, and even acting one-day skipper in the lead-up to to the 2011 world cup.

His trajectory suggested a white ball mainstay, yet a lean world cup meant he was out of the side within three months of leading Australia. By the following summer he'd been dropped as T20 skipper too, and then the following year came his ousting as Victorian leader. He'd popped up intermittently in T20 international squads until late 2014, and even got a lone ODI against England in January 2015, making a duck. That was in Hobart, the scene two months later where he couldn't win a place in Victoria's XI for the Sheffield Shield final.

He kept at it though, and 18 months on he was the leading run scorer in the domestic one-day competition. That 2016-17 summer also ended with White captaining the Bushrangers to a third straight shield title. He started this summer well with 165 against Tasmania in October, although his one-day tournament was interrupted by an abdominal injury. Then, seven months after leading his state to the shield, he was again left out of Victoria's XI.

So, it was perfect then that called up on Thursday to replace Chris Lynn in the ODI squad, he had to pull the pin on a Melbourne Renegades press conference. He had been set to captain the in-form Renegades against the struggling Melbourne Stars, a club that hadn't offered him a new contract three years ago. How misguided that decision seems, with White's call-up coming on the back of 285 BBL runs at 142.5.

Therein lies the irony of this selection. White's chance to press for a spot at next year's world cup, comes 12 months after he had this to say when little-known Queensland batsman Sam Heazlett was picked ahead of him for a one-day series against New Zealand. "You can get picked to play for Australia in any format out of Big Bash, really. It doesn't make a lot of sense," White said, before selection chairman Trevor Hohns hit back.

"Cameron has had plenty of opportunities ... he has had plenty of opportunities in the past and it's probably fair to say performed okay without being earth shattering," Hohns said.

On Thursday, it was Hohns, who called White out of the BBL to play for Australia, only a few weeks after White conceded his international days were almost certainly over.

White could see the funny side when asked about the situation on Thursday. "Making a few runs in the Big Bash hasn't hurt. Maybe it is a little ironic," he said, before adding that his one-day runs would likely have contributed to his recall too.

Not that White was back-tracking on his 2017 comments. "That was just me being honest about what I thought about the selection process at the time," he said.

"Obviously Trevor disagreed about it at the time. We haven't spoken about it, I must admit, since. That's OK as well. Hopefully during this period of time might be a good chance to talk it over. That was just a comment on selection, which is an opinion based thing."

Cricket Victoria's general manager of cricket Shaun Graf was the man who alongside the late David Hookes hatched the plan to install White as captain a decade and a half ago. He said White's fitness should not be overlooked in his longevity. "He's kept himself in really good nick. If you have a look at him from when he first started as a young player to where he is now with his body shape and everything, he's got himself exceptionally fit," Graf said.

That's not all of it though. Graf also speaks of White's stoicism and resilience to bounce back from a topsy-turvy career. And as a couple of long-time teammates of White's said on Thursday, his knowledge of the game and self-belief are further reasons why it's risky to ever write him off.