CMJ: `Super` Hollioake remains cool as the ultimate Test looms (5 Aug 1997)

Tuesday 5 August 1997

`Super` Hollioake remains cool as the ultimate Test looms

Christopher Martin-Jenkins.

BEN HOLLIOAKE was taking Test selection in his stride yesterday. One gets the distinct impression that he really does not understand how nervous and overawed he should be by the very possibility that he might play in a Test match which will decide whether Australia retain the Ashes or England maintain a chance of winning them back.

His mates in the England Under 19 side - seven of them toured Pakistan with him in the winter - now just call him "Super". It is short, presumably, for Superman. The press and television were waiting to talk to him on Hampshire`s ground at Southampton while morning rain threatened abandonment of the grandly called `international` against Zimbabwe yesterday. All the attention washed comfortably over him. He neither shied from it nor revelled in it and made an unbeaten 59 which helped England to win a match reduced to 25 overs a side by eight wickets.

That he has already played in a `real` international, with outstanding success; and that it will be a real Test match on Thursday, another thing altogether, does not prey on his mind. Perhaps that will come much later, when he has made his start and, with luck, his reputation too. Inevitably then some setbacks will follow and all the adulation may threaten to become too much of a good thing.

Not many who watched Tiger Woods and all that his fame entails during his recent week at Troon will have desired to swap places, for all his talent and wealth. The Ben Hol- lioake phenomenon may be on a smaller scale, and pray God he will never need travelling bodyguards, but the same sort of compromises will be required if the private man, not to mention the eligible young bachelor, is to remain level-headed and content beneath the public figure.

At the moment he can only take each day, and each piece of cricketing fame, as it comes. "I realise it`ll be quite different with fielders up, bowlers having long spells and all that," he says, trying to imagine the intensity through slightly narrowed green eyes. "But it helps to have played against bowlers like Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath and at least the last thing they`ll remember about me is coming in early against them at Lord`s and making a few [63 off 48 balls, in fact]. The same goes for Adam: the bloke who hit the winning runs against them every time."

The elder brother is seldom far from Ben`s thoughts and conversion. They share a flat, they play together and they will travel up to Nottingham together today.

Neither has had a very successful season for Surrey but it is on potential and attitude that they have been preferred to, among others, the solid, self-effacing Mark Ealham. En- glish reserve is not a quality in fashion in cricket at the moment. Not that either of the Hollioakes is boastful: just confident, and matter-of-fact. Of his bowling - only 11 firstclass wickets at 34 this season - Ben says that he has bowled better than the figures suggest.

"Again, it`ll be different in a Test match. If I play I`ll probably be fourth seamer, so the main job may be to keep things tight."

He is speculating, however, because no one has yet had the chance to talk to him about what will be expected. He does not yet know, for example, where he will be fielding although he is happy to go anywhere, with the possible exception of bat/pad, not a position he has experienced nor, being sensible, sought.

He has two days now to become reacquainted with those who shared the heady week of success against Australia in the Texaco internationals in May and unless David Lloyd and Mike Atherton sense any unexpected nervousness, he will be presented with his first cap, alongside his brother, in front of the pavilion on Thursday morning. There are few buildings in England more redolent of cricketing tradition than the pavilion at Trent Bridge, the oldest of the first-class venues. But it is part of the reason for Ben`s selection at the age of 19 that to him it is just another ground waiting for just another cricket match to start.

Source :: The Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/)