Russell Jackson
Unpredictable roads ahead for Australia
Summer is a time when the country kids itself about its cricket. It's likely to be different this season
Russell Jackson
13-Oct-2015
In cricket, there's no place like home. Australia's isolation from the rest of the world and its distinctive cricketing environment - fast and bouncy wickets, dry heat and vocal crowds - are of course an essential ingredient in the country's lofty, long-standing status in the international pecking order.
In some eras this has merely been an extension of the side's general buoyancy and their dominance in all corners of the globe, but at other times - the last decade particularly - these environmental factors have tended to obscure the harsh truths about the country's post-golden era sides. Summer in Australia is often a time in which the nation just kids itself for months on end.
Recent examples of this cultural phenomenon include, but are not limited to, 2009-10, when a pair of home Test series against West Indies and Pakistan yielded 2-0 and 3-0 wins that didn't remotely hint at the annihilations that were to come in an away series in India and the home Ashes that followed.
Full postThe importance of Cameron Bancroft
The new man in the Australia squad is a fielder who has the potential to be ranked an allrounder by virtue of his skill close-in
Russell Jackson
21-Sep-2015
The passing of Yorkshire great Brian Close this last week understandably drew many remembrances that focused foremost on his bravery in countering fast bowling, but a number of them also did well to highlight his other notable capacity for courage, which was seen in his fielding close to the bat.
That was where he snaffled so many of his staggering 813 first-class catches. "Be ready for rebounds," he'd tell Yorkshire wicketkeeper Jimmy Binks. What a psyche-out that must have been to batsmen. As is so often the case in cricket history, a sad event dovetailed wonderfully with a happy one, with the ascent of Cameron Bancroft to the Australian Test squad.
Bancroft is an abstinent and calm batsman capable of a similar kind of determined crease occupation as that in which Close specialised. Like the Yorkshireman he's also a tremendously skilled bat-pad fieldsman, which should genuinely excite Australians fans. This week a Bancroft fielding highlights video surfaced and it really is something. Nathan Lyon is probably watching it on a loop with a glass of single-malt Scotch in his hand.
Full postArthur Morris, my pen pal
How the Australian batsman touched the heart of a young fan he had never met by responding to his letters
Russell Jackson
03-Sep-2015
One would suppose that in 2015 the worldwide volume of handwritten, snail mail letters exchanged between pen pals isn't what it once was. Email, Skype, forums, Twitter and the strangely compelling LinkedIn all ensure that virtually anyone who wants to get in contact with you can do so without delay, at any time of the day or night, if they look in the right place.
Before that technological revolution you only had two options, though; a chance meeting or pen and paper. As a kid I once set myself the kind of task that might be familiar to other diabolically nerdy cricket fans: track down the addresses of former players and see if they would write back to me.
All of that came flooding back to me in a wave of embarrassment last month upon the passing of Australia's great opener Arthur Morris, an unconventional hero for a child in the 1990s but elevated to that status once he became the first former cricketer to respond to one of my letters - doubtless an inane exercise in answering questions he had encountered hundreds of times previously.
Full postMichael Clarke: a fan's notes
In many ways, he was representative of a generation of Australian men - though he more accurately represented a historic shift that divides athlete and fan more than ever before
Russell Jackson
19-Aug-2015
Two sporting events of the past fortnight set in motion a train of thought I hadn't had in a while. The first of those events was the Test retirement of Australian captain Michael Clarke, after as miserable an Ashes campaign as any batsman or captain could imagine. The other was the death of Frank Gifford, the New York Giants footballer and subject of Frederick Exley's genre-bending "fictional memoir" A Fan's Notes.
I haven't read Exley's book in a few years but know I loved it when I did, reading it twice on end to savour it. It's made up of the confessions of a man struggling with his own weaknesses. Exley tended to channel life's complexities through sport, a realm in which there were fewer grey areas. To him Gifford was a kind of avatar and explanation for his occasional triumphs but mostly for his extended troughs of suffering.
The star player in Exley's favourite team, Gifford was a man the writer had briefly encountered but never befriended as a college classmate and then developed a complicated, lifelong fan-athlete relationship with, a complicated dynamic that can't have ever been expressed more poignantly. Exley wrote other books but none was anywhere near as good or more widely appreciated than A Fan's Notes. His life was one gradual slide into sadness and obscurity from the minute it was published.
Full postTwo sides to the Haddin case
For all the emotion tied to his family situation and the depth of his contribution to the Test side, he was seriously out of form with the bat
Russell Jackson
03-Aug-2015
It's not often that both sides of an Australian selection debate are correct but in the case of Brad Haddin's omission from the Edgbaston Test, they were fairly close to it.
It was certainly a tough call on a stalwart player but two of the most vocal critics of the decision - Shane Warne and Matthew Hayden - have also been among the most strident supporters of Darren Lehmann's back-to-basics approach to coaching the national team, and what value is more old school than putting the team before the individual and dropping an out-of-form player?
There's an underlying depth to Hayden's and Warne's staunch support of Haddin, you would assume. Warne was a legspinner, the type of bowler for whom a good wicketkeeper is most valuable, a co-conspirator even. The relationship between a spinner and a keeper is generally a closer one than it is for quick bowlers and keepers.
Full postMitchell learns to rock (again)
Soggy in Cardiff, he was back to red-hot at Lord's, providing a fine exposition of the art of heavy metal bowling
Russell Jackson
20-Jul-2015
How much can you really expect of a 33-year-old fast bowler with 372 games of professional cricket to his name? It was a question I found myself pondering during last week's Cardiff Test where, despite his best intentions, Mitchell Johnson looked nothing close to the demolition man he had been as Australia whitewashed England in 2013-14.
He didn't look slow; everything came down in excess of 140kph. He didn't lack effort - he still pounded his way towards the crease like a muscle-bound gymnast headed for the vault. He wasn't wayward like in years gone by. Perhaps it was the lifelessness of the surface? But then he didn't exactly eviscerate India on friendly Australian strips last summer, certainly not like when home pitches had turned his amplifiers up to 11 the summer before.
Maybe all the magic was finally gone, replaced by something far less compelling, something more human. It was close to treason to think it but I was wondering whether Johnson's glorious renaissance as a serious strike bowler might finally be over. Hovering by the boundary with water bottles, even steady-as-she-goes Peter Siddle loomed in the mind as a potential swap.
Full postWhen Harris grimaced, Australia smiled
Equal parts carthorse and strike bowler, whether fit and firing or bruised and shrugging away pain, he bowled for wins, and more often than not he got them
Russell Jackson
07-Jul-2015
It's always fraught to start a sentence with the words "there are two types of people in this world", but I'm going to give it a go anyway. To my mind there are two types of cricketers in the world. Two interesting types, at any rate.
The first type are the ones who we quite erroneously believe are just like us - humble in victory, all too human in defeat - when in actual fact they're so much more. They just placate the narcissist in us, convincing us that with a bit of practice and luck we could probably pull it off too. We couldn't. Ed Cowan is one of those.
The second type of cricketer is the one who does things none of us could ever dream of, feats so stupendous as to take us out of ourselves and question how that shot, that catch, that delivery was even possible to create with human limbs. AB de Villiers, Kevin Pietersen and Shane Warne are and were that type.
Full postKen Grieves, forgotten hero
Remembering an Australian cricketer and footballer who played in the Ashes - against the country of his birth
Russell Jackson
25-Jun-2015
For a nation that doesn't often miss a chance to boast about how well its famous sportspeople are faring overseas, Australians are also curiously prone to forgetting about them entirely once they have faded from view. This is most certainly the case of post-war star Ken Grieves, whose Boy's Own Annual dual-sport career is all but unknown in his native country.
Grieves remains one of the great oddities of Ashes cricket for the fact that he was playing against, not with, his countrymen when he figured in four separate Australian tours of the British Isles. During the 1953, 1956, 1961 and 1964 series he featured in the tour matches of his adopted county, Lancashire, and in '64 he achieved the additional distinction of leading a first-class cricket side against the country of his birth.
Grieves could do it all, combining a long career as a goalkeeper in top-flight English football with a two-decade stint as a swashbuckling mainstay of the county game. Born in Sydney suburb Burwood in 1925, he had already made his New South Wales Sheffield Shield debut a few months after his 20th birthday, slotting in seamlessly alongside the likes of his Petersham club team-mates Sid Barnes, Ray Lindwall and Bill O'Reilly. In that game he produced 68 runs and an impressive five outfield catches as his side posted an innings victory over South Australia. A month after that he took an undefeated century off Lindsay Hassett's Services XI, a side containing Keith Miller.
Full postOlder Australia, stronger Australia?
Their batsmen are well seasoned going into the Ashes - like on other recent visits to England. It is a trend that has worked in terms of run-scoring, if not overall results
Russell Jackson
09-Jun-2015
I never quite imagined a day in which my primary concern as the Australians played an away Test series against West Indies would be England, but the result in last week's first Test in Dominica at least proved that I might not have been the only one with my mind elsewhere.
I saw a stat during that Test, something that got me thinking about the upcoming Ashes. By the time the first ball is sent down in Cardiff, the average age of Australia's first-choice line-up will hover close to 32, while England's will be nearer 27.
At a basic level, that just represents two teams at differing points of their life cycle. Australia are asking for one last campaign out of trusty old hands, while England, in a batting sense at least, barely have any old hands left. Australia's selectors are telling us that it's in the twilight of his career that a batsman knows his game best. Notwithstanding the Kevin Pietersen imbroglio, England have identified the batsmen and allrounders who will take them through the next half-decade and beyond. Both approaches involve a degree of bravery and at least the appearance of faith in personnel.
Full postDarren Lehmann, Yorkshire colossus
He did spectacularly well in county cricket and was part of many an escapade, but those exploits went largely unnoticed back home
Russell Jackson
20-May-2015
Back in 2001, when Darren Lehmann helped lift Yorkshire to their first County Championship title since 1968, it's safe to say that some wild celebrations were had. Two days of raucous partying after they'd secured that trophy, Lehmann and his team-mates did however have to face up to the sobering reality of a Sunday League fixture against Nottinghamshire in Scarborough.
Legend has it that before heading out to bat in that game, Lehmann noticed that an overflow of champagne had pooled in his helmet. His reaction, perhaps not the natural one to some, was to slurp it down and then inform his comrades that they were about to witness something even more remarkable.
It's the kind of anecdote that those who have played a lot of club cricket might be familiar with; harmless and juvenile, and usually ending with some kind of bizarre, cheap dismissal or mild bodily harm. Not for Lehmann. He was true to his word, caning the Notts bowlers for 191 from 103 deliveries as though his portly, hungover frame had been swept across the field in a brief but destructive tornado.
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