Almanac Cricket: Fast bowling: A love affair.

 

I’ve loved Test cricket for as long as I can remember. I didn’t inherit my love for cricket from my father as many kids do. The old man hated most sports and reserved a special dislike of cricket which, he believed, was the sport of the upper-class establishment.

 

Instead, my love for cricket was passed to me by my maternal grandfather; an austere man who didn’t drink, smoke or swear and looked down upon those who did. My old man did all of those things in abundance and so there was no love lost between the two most influential men in my early life. Just another reason my old man hated cricket.

 

My grandfather had two great sporting loves; South Melbourne Football Club and Test cricket. God forbid if you ever stood up in front of the telly while the cricket was on. 

 

“You might be a pain but you’re not made of glass,” was his typically acerbic remark if you blocked his view for even an instant.

 

Once upon a time my grandfather played for Golden Square Methodist in the Bendigo Churches League – a precursor to the Bendigo District Cricket League. Decades later I played for United Cricket Club in the Emu Valley League. Unbeknownst to me at the time, United has its origins in an amalgamation of Golden Square Methodist and Quarry Hill Congregational. Small world. 

 

There’s much to love about the game of cricket – its quirks, its traditions, its rich history, and the endless stories that are interwoven into the game. There is little more exciting than the anticipation of the first ball of an Ashes series. Or the buzz of a Boxing Day Test at the MCG. Watching a live test match between Australia and England or Australia and India is next level: The ebbs and flows of the crowd during seven hours of drinking beer out of plastic cups in the baking summer sun is something to behold.

 

There is little that is more delightful to watch than an exquisitely timed cover drive. Or a batsman slugging their way through over after over of intense and bruising fast bowling to finally prevail and carve out a memorable century.

 

However there is one thing above all that has led me to love cricket so much: fast bowling. 

 

It is said that cricket is a game of millimetres and it is the art of fast bowling more than anything that makes that a truism. A few millimetres either way can make the difference between a glorious off-drive or a nick to slips. Another name on the honour board at Lord’s, or the end of a career.

 

Great fast bowling is a combination of precision and menace. Persistence and power. I can sit and watch for hours, waiting in anticipation for that glorious clunk when a fast bowler uproots a batsman’s middle stump and sends it cartwheeling in the direction of fine leg. Or that perfect outswinger that finds the outside edge of the bat or clips the top of off-stump.

 

The greatest of my cricketing heroes are the mad bastard fast bowlers.

 

The whirlwind bluster of Malcolm Marshall. The bluff and brawn of Merv Hughes. The metronomic precision of Glenn McGrath. The workhorse grunt of Craig McDermott. Then there’s the greatest of them all: Dennis Lillee. 

 

Mustachioed, with open shirt, gold chain, and loads of swagger. Menacing with a glint of larrikin in his eye. Fast and accurate with an action that all fast bowlers aspired to. Barring a back injury, World Series Cricket, and a time when Test cricketers were paid more like county cricket journeymen than sporting superstars, Lillee would be the undisputed king. As it is, he is the fast bowler’s fast bowler.

 

One of my favourite cricket memories is of Mitchell Johnson tearing the heart out of Graham Smith’s South Africa in the last half hour of play after a long, hot day at the WACA in 2008. The previous seven hours of Smith, Kallis and co batting Australia into bored submission forgotten in the space of 20 balls of aggressive, left arm fast bowling as Johnson took 5 for 2 and changed the course of the Test and the series.

 

During my cricket career, I was a fairly average, 2nd and 3rd division bush league swing bowler. Bowling could be a bit of slog, trundling in time and time again on a Saturday afternoon in 30-plus degree heat. As often as not with a hangover. But then there were the days when you just seemed to hit your stride. There was no better feeling than when your run up felt fluid and the ball was coming out of the hand perfectly, hitting the pitch hard, and slapping into the `keeper’s gloves. 

 

Except of course when it ducked in and took out the batsman’s middle stump.

 

More from Scott Hunt Here

 

 

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