How Greg Chappell turned David Warner into Test star

Greg Chappell well remembers the tour of Zimbabwe in which he tried to corral a raging bull.

Greg Chappell, left, talks with David Warner in May this year. Picture: AAP

Greg Chappell well remembers the tour of Zimbabwe in which he tried to corral a raging bull.

It was an Australia A tour of 2011 and the batting great had a mission to try to convince white-ball warrior David Warner he had the tools to be a Test player.

Warner listened and nodded with the suggestion but when he went into the nets slogged the way he’d always slogged, prompting Chappell to take immediate action.

“He wasn’t training the right way,’’ Chappell said. “I remember one day in the nets we said to him, ‘if you are going to play Test cricket you have to practise batting as well as hitting’.

“We stopped him batting a couple of days in a row because he was trying to belt everything. It was not much fun for the bowlers and it was not doing him much good either.

“We had a chat to him. He was smart enough to get the message and he started batting properly in the nets and went from strength to strength.’’

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The message got through to the point that in Perth against New Zealand this week Warner, who has scored 23 Test centuries, needs just one more to match the man who ended his net session.

Chappell and fellow batting great Viv Richards scored 24 Test tons, which means Warner is now walking shoulder to shoulder with some of the game’s greats.

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Chappell has enjoyed Warner’s progress because he was one of the first big voices to insist that Warner, despite making his initial impression in white-ball cricket, would become a Test match star.

A few months after the Zimbabwe tour Chappell was quoted as urging the national selectors to pick Warner “anywhere in the top six’’ in the Test team.

“I saw him play a bit in youth cricket and he just had an awareness. He just knew how to bat.

“I have known him for a long time. He can be an annoying character. I can understand how teammates can find him a little bit annoying because he has always been hyperactive.

“But he has always had a good heart. When you tour with them you watch them closely on and off the field and I saw how he was with people around the place … polite and courteous. A number of people have said to me he was a good young fellow. He probably has not helped himself in some areas but I am not sure he is the villain he has been portrayed as.’’

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