Copyright 2009
The first shot I ever saw Mark Waugh play told me he was one of the poets. The ball was short and outside the off stump. With his right foot across, he flexed slightly at the knees, swayed back from the waist, and gave himself just enough room to coax it past point.
Waugh was the most stylish player I ever saw. His flick off his pads through mid-wicket was a thing of beauty, his drive through cover a caress rather than a strike ? a study of balance and poise. He looked good just leaving the ball alone. He played lazily and languidly, almost as if he were thinking about something else. He probably was ? race-horses perhaps. It irritated him to hear that he did not prize his wicket quite as much as his brother Steve. Born minutes apart, their styles could not have been more different. Steve was an ugly duckling, even walking like a duck ? not a good analogy for a batsman. He shuffled and fidgeted but somehow managed to be in the right place when the ball arrived and scored more runs for Australia than almost anyone else. Certainly no one was ever more reliable. They would say that if you had to have someone bat to save your life Steve was your man.
A curious aspect of the relationship between the twins was that they hardly spoke to each other. It was not that they were on bad terms. It?s just that they had shared a bedroom throughout their youth and apparently had little more to say. When batting together they would meet mid-pitch between overs, prod it a bit, stare past each other and then slowly saunter back to their ends. This silent communion probably involved some transcendental form of mutual support.
Cricket is almost unique in the way it reveals different styles expressed in the pursuit of success. The Waugh brothers epitomize the difference between the pugnacious battlers and the pretty boys. The battlers will spill blood for you. They will fight in all weather and on all wickets. Dashing or dour, they are always dependable. In 1986 Dean Jones almost died in the heat at Madras grinding out a double-century to save a match. After vomiting on the pitch he was spurred on by his captain Allan Border (another renowned pug) who said if he can?t handle the conditions ?then let?s get a real Australian?. Greg Richie who like Border was a Queenslander and the next man in.
Ken ?Slasher? (need one say more) Mackay, was by all accounts a journeyman player. But at Adelaide in 1961 he and No 11 Lindsay Kline batted an afternoon to deny a West Indian attack, led by the great Wes Hall. Toward the end Slasher was deliberately taking the Hall thunderbolts in the ribs rather than risk getting an edge that would give the West Indians victory.
Not that the poets lack courage. They just don?t often have a need for it and occasionally their commitment is questioned. David Gower was probably the most graceful left-hander that every played. But in 1991 at Adelaide, he was heavily criticised for giving his wicket away at a crucial juncture with a thoughtless shot. That same series, I watched him take 123 off the Australian bowlers at the Sydney Cricket Ground and it was like a stroll in the park. His bat resembled a wand so lightly did it lift and descend. He was smooth and unruffled and seemed to bat for the joy of it. At the start of the fourth day he was batting with Mike Atherton who was in the nineties and struggling toward what would be his only test hundred against Australia. Gower had about thirty at the time. He proceeded to stroke six or eight boundaries in a short time with outrageous ease. You could only sympathise with Atherton watching from the other end. It looked so easy.
Syd O?linn played a few Tests for South Africa in the early sixties. He was the quintessential pug. A left-hander, he was nuggety and cramped with an awkward backlift. He could be aggressive but often found himself holding the the innings together when the more illustrious names had come and gone. He was not a glamour player. He almost certainly had only one fan. Me. I loved the guy. When he got his highest test score of 98 at Lords in 1960, and was caught controversially, I remember listening to the commentary on a huge electric radio with my father.
In 1977 I was standing in the kitchen in my apartment when I saw him, now nearing fifty, walk past the window. I was so thrilled and shocked that I stood rooted to the spot, unable to do what I have since regretted a thousand time not doing ? running after him, telling him that he was my idol when I was a kid, that I followed his career, that he was my favourite player. It might have made his day. It would certainly have been the only time he would have heard that.
Ted Dexter?s nickname was ?Lord Ted? It suited him. He was a bit of a toff I think and played with the ease of an aristocrat. I saw him get 172 at the Wanderers in 1964 and I recall the great stroke-making that was a hallmark of his game. In the field he used to stand at square leg and practice his golf swing. It looked equally majestic. Some guys have everything. I have a photograph of him playing back to Wes Hall, on his toes, left elbow high, eyes over the ball, bat dead straight. It is a thing of beauty.
In 2000 I had the opportunity to attend a cricket dinner in Australia at which Wes Hall was featured as the main speaker. He had been a preacher and parliamentarian and was a gifted orator. Amongst many humorous anecdotes, he told us that his first daughter was called Sydney because she was conceived in Sydney. His second daughter was called Adelaide because she was conceived there. He then said ?Thank God my third daughter was not conceived in Lahore!?
For non-cricket lovers who, incredibly, might still be with us here, a tennis analogy of the comparison I am trying to make between batting styles would be one between Roger Federer and Lleyton Hewitt. Hewitt, the typical pugilist but lacking the same natural talent, has a game that is so physical it is inevitably punishing to his body and he has had a series of injuries over his career. Rafael Nadal, a far better player, is nonetheless similar. I can?t remember Federer ever being injured. He seems to float around the court. He hardly ever perspires.
Lee Irvine was an effective batsman. Smallish in stature, he was aggressive and hit the ball hard but you knew it. The poets never seem to hit the ball hard. They get velocity through means unknown to physics. It might be magic.
Barry Richards is considered in some quarters to be the greatest player since World War II. He had everything. A superb technique, quick feet, great reflexes and time, always time. Two moments stay with me always. In 1973 the Derek Robbins team toured South Africa, part of what became known as the ?rebel? tours during the years of South Africa?s cricket isolation. The South African team at the time would have ruled the world in test cricket. Richards opened the batting and I planned to spend the day watching him. Robin Jackman, currently a commentator in South Africa, bowled a slightly slower ball to him. In the microseconds that separated delivery from arrival my heart jumped was in my mouth. He is going to play too early and pop up a catch. But Richards delayed his shot just sufficiently to stroke it through the covers for four. A moment of potential crisis was dismissed with nonchalance. A few years earlier I watched him lift Chaka Watson, a very quick bowler, off the front foot over square leg on to the grassy area in front of the players pavilion at the Wanderers, with something approaching disdain. It was like watching someone flick a bit of lint off a sleeve.
When I was about nine my father took me to see Norman O?Neill play. He told me I was watching the best batsman in the world. O?Neill was out for one. I could not understand this anomaly. It was said at the time that he was having trouble concentrating. I imagined that perhaps this meant that he was watching some bird fly by when the ball was on its way. A few years later I saw him score 158 not out at the Wanderers ? a magnificent innings. I have a vivid memory of beautiful front foot drives through the covers.
O?Neill was a notoriously nervous starter and in fact used to throw up in the dressing rooms before a big innings. When I got to Australia I met a guy who had played club cricket in O?Neill?s time. He told me that one season there was a program whereby Test players got to play one game with ordinary first-grade players in a weekend match. Norm O?Neill was assigned to play for this guy?s club. The team was very excited but perplexed when they found him vomiting in the toilet when it was his turn to bat.
Eddie Barlow was a swashbuckler, a capricious risk taker with loads of confidence who rode his luck and celebrated it. He transformed the teams he played in by his infectious optimism and self-belief. He was your typical pug. He could carve the ball over the slips, bludgeon through the covers or backward of point off the back foot. But he was no stylist.
There are journeymen, batsmen, great batsmen and giants. And then there is Graeme Pollock. He had this secret. Its called timing but no one really knows what this means. I doubt it can be learned. It certainly can?t be taught. It is some sort of innate knowledge. And with Graeme it never left him. He stopped playing at the age of forty four. Eight years later he appeared in a charity game in Australia and alone among his former great colleagues displayed the same contemptuous ease. But he was always frustratingly fragile. In the early years when he played for Eastern Province, we would get one opportunity per season to see him in Johannesburg. And if he failed we had another year to wait. I remember Alan Browde once abusively reminding an umpire who had just given Pollock out of this sad fact from the stands.
Don Bradman was short, but quick with an incredible eye and apparently an amazing ability to find gaps in the field. But from footage I have seen I would not call him graceful. Born with natural gifts (he excelled at many sports), when young he nonetheless famously practiced with a stump and a golf-ball.
Rickie Ponting may be the greatest batsman ever produced by Australia after Bradman. Supremely fluent except at the start of his innings when he can lunge a bit, he can be exquisitely graceful, especially when he plays that beautiful hook shot where he swivels marvelously on his heels, rolls the wrists and ends up facing the direction of the ball, swaying back slightly from the waist.
There have been many wonderfully stylish players down the years. Frank Woolley, Walter Hammond, Martin Crowe, Martin Kent, Greg Chappell, John Waite, Tiger Lance, Carl Hooper, Marvan Atapattu are a few that come to mind. Of the battlers one thinks of Ken Barrington, Maurice Leyland, Jackie McGlew, Trevor (?Barnacle?!) Bailey, Peter Richardson and many others.
By all that is right and fair, the pugs should be admired more than poets. They are self made men. They sweat and toil at practice throughout their youth, honing their game, learning technique, building resilience, patience, method and mental strength. The better ones come through. A golfing representative of this class would be Gary Player who could not hit the ball as far as say Jack Nicklaus. But through physical fitness, sheer determination (my father once saw him practicing in the bunker well after sunset because he had not yet sunk three) he made up for it. For some this is inspiring. A few years ago I had lunch with the son of a friend of mine, a cricket nut and a first-grade player himself. Rather sheepishly he told me that his two heroes in the game were Kepler Wessells and Geoff Marsh ? two of the ugliest players ever to hold a bat. But he admired the way they made the most of their limitations and squeezed out so much more through hard work and application.
Yet it is the poets who take your breath away. For where Steve Waugh punches the ball, Mark teases it. Where Lee Irvine smashes it, David Gower strokes it. Where Eddie Barlow forces it, Ted Dexter guides it. Its hard to discern exactly what distinguishes these types of players. One feature is that they never seem hurried in their shot-making. They always have time. They also always seem balanced. Their centres of gravity must always be found somewhere on a vertical between head and feet. I also think that height is a necessary factor, making possible the languor and grace that we associate with the artists, characteristics denied to even great players with flair like Bryan Lara and Tendulkar.
Pugs are optimists. How else could they expect to play in the company they do? They take risks and knocks but develop the temperament to go the distance. Poets are too sensitive for life?s abrasions. They are fair-weather players, who cannot be trusted to bat for days on a quagmire where a nation?s pride is at stake. Not for them the grime and the gore of battle. Their world is of silk and honey, but when the sun shines and the pitch is good and you are there, life can seem sweet indeed.
Bless them all, both poets and pugs. They represent the full range of human character. For after all cricket, or at least batting (for some, bowlers are there only so that the art of batting can express itself) is a metaphor for life. I once heard ?species? being defined as just another solution to the problem of staying alive. Well batting techniques also represent solutions to the problem of survival and ?thrival? ? a means toward accumulation and success while avoiding the dreaded death rattle behind you. Different varieties are found in the doughtiness of an Allan Border, the determination of a Steve Waugh, the industry of a Dean Jones, the pugnacity of a Slasher Mackay, the ebullience of an Eddie Barlow, the effortlessness of a Mark Waugh and the elegant indifference of a David Gower. Each of these men offer us a model for how we might live.
Or do I go too far?