Return of the prodigal

This is cricket's great love story of 2001. Watching Damien Martyn bat on July 7 was like looking up your first sweetheart, who you dumped seven years ago because she seemed skittish and a little immature, and discovering that she was the one for you after all. Seven years is the time it took Martyn to win back a place on merit in Australia's top six; July 7 is the day he cemented it with his first Test century.

Martyn ended up with 105 that day at Edgbaston, and there were plenty more where that came from: 52 at Lord's, 118 at Headingley, 64 not out at The Oval, all made with such casual ease that he might have been brushing away a couple of the blowflies that long ago colonised his home state of Western Australia.

Best of all, though, was his unbeaten 33 from 37 balls on a darting Trent Bridge pitch. Martyn strode in as Steve Waugh was stretchered out, with 69 runs needed, six wickets effectively in hand and England surging towards only their second victory in a "live" Ashes Test in 15 years. Cue three fours in three balls: a cocksure hook, a tickle round his legs and a punchy cover-drive, Martyn's signature stroke, which is fast becoming as familiar to Australian cricket watchers as Ian Chappell's hook or Allan Border's square-cut. Game over.

Martyn's 382 runs during the Ashes series were as electrifying - they rattled off the bat at 74 runs per 100 balls - as they were effortless. Yet he accumulated them almost invisibly. The brash youngster who had once plundered eyecatching 35s was now crafting centuries that passed virtually unnoticed. He made another, probably his most important yet, in the first Test against South Africa at Adelaide. Yet he won no Man-of-the-Match awards, no Player-of-the-Series baubles, and few headlines.

What he did win was a rare devotion, the kind inspired by Mohammad Azharuddin, David Gower, Zaheer Abbas and precious few others, among cricket's aesthetes. Until recently, Martyn's was a story of what might have been: precocious kid thrashes all-comers at junior level, captains Australia's Under-19 team, plays his first Test at 21, then throws it all away at 22, thanks to an inexplicably rash cover-slash when Australia were seven runs from beating South Africa at the SCG in 1993-94.

A little simplistic perhaps, but that's another story. What really matters about this story is that it has a happy ending. Martyn has evolved into arguably the first supremely elegant batsman of the 21st century. His head is always still, his elbow pointing high, his body exquisitely balanced. But it is his feet that hold the key: their first move is an almost imperceptible shuffle back, freeing him either to stride forward or go further back and land in the perfect position to meet the ball.

"The overall impression he creates," the Australian cricket writer Philip Derriman wrote recently, "is one of well-oiled coordination. He looks light, balanced, nimble, decisive, controlled."

Derriman was talking about Don Bradman but it could easily be Martyn. Bradman, of course, would never have faltered against a largely anonymous New Zealand attack, as Martyn did recently. But who would have it any other way?