Australia’s veteran opener hits the 100-Test milestone,

True to the impressive array of wildlife the country has to offer, there was something of an animal theme emerging during Australia A’s tour of Zimbabwe in July 2011. While the ‘GOAT’ nickname for young groundsman-turned-tweaker Nathan Lyon was still many years from materialising, a couple of other monikers within the camp were being created or consolidated.

Jason Gillespie, who was coaching domestically in Zimbabwe at the time, was responsible for one.

“We were heading up to Kwekwe, and ‘Dizzy’ (Gillespie) was on the bus with us,” remembers then Australia A head coach Troy Cooley. “As Mitch Marsh gets on, he says, ‘Bison!’

“He’d been watching the bison on the National Geographic channel, and he’d learned that a bison’s head weighed about 200 kilos, which he thought was about the same as Mitch Marsh’s head.”

Higher up the batting order, a diminutive left-hander named David Warner was taking on the characteristics of the ‘Bull’ nickname that had been bestowed upon him by his New South Wales teammate Daniel Smith.

“He had just adopted this persona of being ‘the Bull’, and that really started to develop through that series,” recalls former teammate Callum Ferguson, who shared a couple of sizeable partnerships with Warner across the one, two and four-day matches in Harare.

When he wasn’t trying his luck at the hotel casino alongside Aaron Finch, Warner was adding energy and personality to an 18-man squad that would ultimately produce 17 Test players.

He was also piling on the runs. In eight matches on tour, against red ball and white, he topped the scorers with 666, including three hundreds. What Ferguson remembers most vividly though is his presence at the crease. Warner had become ‘the Bull’.

“He was taking on all comers and he really embraced that nickname,” he continues. “He was encapsulating it with his body language and his domineering style, and he really started to cement it as a mantra almost.

“He joked about it, like, ‘the Bull never sleeps – he’s always coming at you’.

“He’s obviously not a huge man in stature but his personality and the way he was carrying himself out there, he was owning the crease.”