A pocket full of cool

In the nineties, a man took “pocketing a catch” a bit too literally. While playing for New Zealand, Bryan Young would take a slip catch, put the ball in his pocket, and run towards the successful bowler to shake hands. Cricket is a game for various aspects of various characters, and this one stood out for Young. He is actually remembered for that, and not for a more incredible achievement. But that’s for later.

That celebration came about as a fluke, Young says. “We were playing Pakistan in a Test at Eden Park. It was the first Test of the series. In that game I happened to take six catches in the field. In those days you didn’t really have to give the ball to the umpire. I took the first one - and I didn’t even think about it - and put it in my pocket, went up and congratulated the bowler.

“Five or ten minutes later I took another catch and did the same thing, and I didn’t even think about it. At lunch time the manager told me the TV guys were making a bit of talking about it. And they said, you better keep doing it. I just sort of laughed it off, and the catches kept coming my way, and because so many catches came to me in those two days, all of a sudden it became a following.”

The other cool thing Young did was not a fluke at all.

Aged 29, after nine years of keeping wicket and batting in the lower order, he transformed himself into an opener. From a flashy keeper-batsman to an opener so stoic, he used to bore people. He frustrated the best of them into giving him some verbals. Wasim Akram once asked him if he was carrying his club bat or Test bat. Curtly Ambrose, whom he – surprise, surprise – drove, told Young that if he wanted to repeat the shot, he would need a stapler.

“I had lost the passion really for keeping,” says Young, “and my body wasn’t handling it really well. I was having a problem with my knee. And I think I also recognised I was struggling to make the national team as a wicketkeeper. So I made a decision that I’d retire the gloves and concentrate on my batting. Thankfully it worked out well for me; it was a risk.”

It couldn’t have been easy work? “The transition was a hard one,” he says. “I locked myself in an indoor centre with a batting coach and transformed my game at age 29, which was pretty hard work. I worked very hard for four, five, six months actually. And then I got my chance and I was able to take it. I guess I had two careers.

“In my hometown we had an indoor centre. I worked hard with Robert Anderson. I asked him for some help, and he very kindly helped me. It was all about restricting my game. I was a wicketkeeper who played 360 degrees; I played all the shots. Ended up being an opener batsman who played a very few shots. That was very hard because my natural game was to attack and to play with flair. I changed an awful lot for Test cricket. It was not my natural game when I was opening in Tests.”

Not playing his natural game, Young played 35 Tests, scoring two centuries – one actually a fluent double against Muttiah Muralitharan and co. The other one was a seven-hour 120 in a successful chase of 324 against Akram and Waqar Younis. But he now talks like a typical opener, making a passing acknowledgement on these innings, and choosing a score of 29 as his best Test knock.

“There are some other innings that’s not a big score, but you actually look back and say technically you played really well.” Sounds like a very cool thing for an opener to say. But Young is serious too. “My 29 against Pakistan in that same series, I felt that the best two hours for me in Test cricket. I think back on that and actually that was – seaming all over the lace and moving around - quite satisfying.”

An average of 31 and a strike-rate of 38 in a belated Test career might fit a journeyman cricketer. But because he rediscovered himself at such a late stage, and because he developed a celebration style that was cool yet dignified, Young is not one.