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A warning to one's competition is supposed to involve a supreme performance. A thrashing, a peerless display of skill, an athlete or a team bending a contest to their command like Magneto in an abandoned car yard.
The warning that Australia's women's cricket team sent out in its final Women's World Cup pool match in Taunton was none of those. No demonstration of a level that opponents could not hope to attain.
At the time of writing, the end of the Women's World Cup group stages, a lot of things for Australia's team are not exactly as they are supposed to be.
A captain, who is not a captain, becomes a bowler, who is not a bowler.
Another bowler becomes the most important in the side while taking no wickets. That bowler should be batting, but excels at the former while the latter is not required. The attack is unbalanced, and demolishes the opposition.
Even when South Africa dismissed Australia short of 50 overs — the kind of thing that other teams dream about - it somehow looked a disadvantage.
Confused? Me too. Let us go through some of the contradictions.
Most prominent, Ashleigh Gardner. The player who batted at number three while the Sydney Sixers surged to the last Women's Big Bash League title, has been playing as a specialist bowler in the national side.
Gardner has always been a bowling option, but through her 16 matches in that competition last season, she only bowled her full allotment of overs three times.
Come the World Cup, she has barely faced a ball. It was an archaic idea of seniority and stripe-earning that shunted Gardner down the order. Perhaps almost out of a sense of embarrassment, Australia's captains (yes, multiple) began bowling her more.
Yet what a revelation her off-spin has been. Gardner has always been a nominal all-rounder, but in this tournament she has bowled more dot balls than any other player. In total, 242 of her 396 deliveries have gone scoreless.
Gardner has bowled 66 of a possible 70 overs across seven matches, including three where teams were bowled out. It tells you how much her side has depended on her. An economy rate of 3.84 per over will do that.
Gardner's frugality is based on spin and accuracy. Where a lot of spinners in the women's game either dart the ball or give it huge loop, Gardner sits between.
She gives her off-breaks a genuine rip, and extracts turn from the wicket. But she is also scarily accurate, bowling straight, rarely short, and giving precious little away.
The chance of turn already has players cautious when facing her, then her accuracy in pitching the ball makes it hard to play strokes. Even during Chamari Atapattu's blitz of 178 not out at Bristol, Gardner went for 39 from 10 overs.
She has frequently bowled early in the innings, opening the bowling against India, and sending down 24 of her 66 overs before the 20th over of a match.
Had you compiled a list of potential bowlers before this World Cup, most observers would not even have thought to include Gardner.
Against South Africa, while everyone else took wickets, she bowled 10 overs for 31, looking the most threatening of the day, every spell turning the screw a little tighter on the chase.
Then there is Rachael Haynes, the captain you have when you are not having a captain. After a four-year exile from the team, Haynes came into the World Cup squad but not the first-choice XI.
At least until Meg Lanning's shoulder started playing up, at which point Haynes has had to step in twice as leader. This did not go well in Taunton, the temporary captain gone for a six-ball duck. Any chance she had of lobbying for retention in the semi-finals looked to have gone.
Instead, she decided to bowl for just the seventh time in one-day internationals. Her medium pace was neither incisive nor threatening. Her first ball was a full toss. Somehow middle-order stalwart Mignon du Preez smacked it to a catch at midwicket.
Laura Wolvaardt had been going sublimely against Australia's big names, driving through the covers repeatedly for 71. Against Haynes' gentle pace, Wolvaardt slogged a length ball to the same spot as du Preez. The least likely player to make the breakthroughs had both.
Third, the back half of Australia's innings fell apart, and it did not seem to matter. Elyse Villani made her second golden duck of the tournament. Alyssa Healy offered a tantalising glimpse of her strokeplay, then holed out to a full toss. The rest followed, the last six wickets in 40 runs.
And yet, it did not seem to matter. South Africa had never beaten Australia, whose top order had presumptively made up any shortfall, and a chase of 270 would have been a World Cup record.
In the end, being dismissed just let Australia start bowling out the other mob early.
Which is what happened without much fuss. Even with a decent partnership between Wolvaardt and Trisha Chetty, South Africa never looked genuinely in the chase. Aside from Gardner keeping the runs down, Kristen Beams and Jess Jonassen did the same and took wickets.
All through this tournament, Australia has relied on spinners to the exclusion of seam. The options are limited, only Megan Schutt and Ellyse Perry bowl proper medium pace. This was exposed against England, where Sarah Aley would have been invaluable at the death.
Yet that was the only game where the Australians were punished. The other matches, they have got away with that lack of range.
It seems a simple equation - bring Aley in down the order, shift someone out from the middle, and you have a far more versatile playing line-up to handle a range of conditions.
But whatever the wisdom, or whatever the conventional approach should be, Australia keeps disregarding it. And it keeps not seeming to matter. Australia is in a semi-final, second only to England, and taking on the Indian team beaten so soundly with the same line-up a few days ago.
This latest win was not that of a well-oiled machine. It involved improvisation, luck, imperfections. But this team does not have to be perfect to be intimidating. Beating another semi-finalist so comfortably while also being so far from perfection - that is intimidating enough in itself.
Topics: cricket, sport, england, united-kingdom