The frequently intoxicated and constitutionally irresponsible Homer Simpson once told his eternally patient wife Marge: “You have a gambling problem!” Surprisingly, he was right — the normally responsible Marge really did have a gambling problem. A decade ago, the suggestion that Australia would one day have a Test batting line-up statistically inferior to England’s would’ve been no less implausible but, like Marge’s gambling problem, this once far-fetched notion is now an uncomfortable, undeniable reality — we have a batting problem. Gideon Haigh devoted his final newspaper column of the Australian summer to highlighting it:
“Twenty years ago, there were 60 hundreds scored in the Sheffield Shield; this season there have been 31.”
When, earlier that summer, Ricky Ponting suddenly retired from Test cricket, the (short) queue of batsmen vying to replace him was populated mainly by a generation of Australian batsmen with first-class averages mired in the 30s and a single-digit number of first-class hundreds: Rob Quiney, Callum Ferguson, Alex Doolan and Shaun Marsh.
The contrast with the preceding generation could not be more stark: year after year, the likes of Jamie Siddons, Brad Hodge, Stuart Law, Michael Bevan, Darren Lehmann, Michael Di Venuto, Matthew Elliott and Martin Love piled on mountains of first-class hundreds and built career averages in the mid-40s or greater, yet such was the depth of Australia’s batting stocks, none of them enjoyed a lengthy Test career. But, as inevitably as a macroeconomic boom is followed by a trough, this Golden Age of Australian Batsmanship has been followed by an Age of Batting Austerity.
Into this Age of Batting Austerity steps Phillip Joel Hughes, the one genuine, old school exception to a pernicious modern-day trend. Hughes is 24. He has 21 first-class hundreds spread across four continents and a career average of 44.20. Two of his three Test hundreds were scored in a series win in South Africa against the world’s finest pace battery when he became the youngest batsman in history to score centuries in both innings of a Test match; the third was scored in the second innings of the final Test of Michael Clarke’s debut Test series as captain and clinched the series win by making safe the final match with Australia already 1-0 up. By the age of 22, Hughes had scored his second hundred in a Shield final. In the season just past, despite playing only six Shield games due to his national team duties, Hughes was one of only six batsmen who scored at least two Shield hundreds.
None of this comes as any surprise to long-time observers of Australian cricket. In a recent column on
ESPNcricinfo, Ian Chappell reminded us of some of the elements of Australia’s centuries-old tradition of great batsmanship — a bush upbringing (see, eg, Bradman, McCabe, Walters and Hayden); “playing against men at a young age”; and the ability to think and “work things out for themselves”.
Hughes possesses all these traits. In a nation which is now more urbanised than the United States, he, like his teammates
Peter Siddle and Nathan Lyon, hails from a small country town most Australians wouldn’t be able to find on a map. Macksville has one high school and a population of 2,786. Hughes grew up there on a banana farm, “always being the youngest [in his cricket teams] playing guys that are always older”.
His batting technique — homespun and heterodox — reflects that upbringing. When he first burst onto the Test arena, Hughes, standing all of 5ft 6in tall, resembled a hobbit scurrying away towards leg to create room to scythe balls through the off side. In and of itself, there is nothing wrong with being an off side batsman (see Sourav Ganguly and Herschelle Gibbs), but Hughes had a technical flaw: when he was out of form, his back foot stepped backwards in the direction of fine leg, which meant that his front shoulder was pointed towards cover.
This had two deleterious effects. Firstly, it closed him off in the vein of Kepler Wessels, making it practically impossible for him to generate any real power in his on side shots, with the exception of his fence-clearing slog-sweep. Secondly, it caused him to not present the full face of the bat to the ball when playing a defensive stroke — because his batmaker’s name was facing cover. Consequently, he was predisposed to nick balls angled across him. After doing so on four consecutive occasions to Chris Martin, he was deservedly dropped from the Australian Test team in December 2011.
Hughes responded by choosing to skip the inaugural T20 Big Bash League in order to undertake two intensive boot camps with his batting coach, Neil D’Costa, aimed at refining his game so that he could not only earn his spot back, but thrive at Test level.
It worked. Twelve months later,
Hughes was back in the Test side thanks to the weight of Shield runs scored with his refined technique.
Now, when he faces up, his shoulders are aligned in the direction of a straightish mid on and his front foot is leg side of his back foot. This more open stance gives him a stabler base. Previously, much like Bradman during Bodyline, Hughes’s primary method of playing short-pitched bowling aimed at his body was to back away to leg and attempt to smack the ball through the off side. Now, because his back foot is positioned off side of his front foot in his batting stance, he is able to pivot onto his back foot when the fast bowler drops short, thereby enabling him to pull and hook with power.
Hughes, then, is an Australian batsman straight off the pages of our glorious cricket history books: country-born and raised playing against men, technically unorthodox, hardworking, self-made, self-learning, and blessed with the ability to score first-class hundreds like a hobbit eats food.
Yet, to some, he remains an object of ridicule. Bewildering though it may seem to technical fetishists in the lands of England and Twitter, Hughes has the unequivocal support of the people in Australian cricket whose opinions matter. Shane Warne gave Hughes a “tick” for the tour of India because he showed learning and improvement throughout. In his column after the tour, the first cricketer that Clarke praised was Hughes. Ian Chappell applauded Hughes’ “positive mindset” and the “aggressive fashion” in which got himself out of his form trough in India.
A third Australian captain, Steve Waugh, added in late March 2013: “I like the look of Phil Hughes, he’s got something deep within him that makes him a long-term Test player”.
Australia has the bowlers to take the English wickets needed to win back the Ashes. The question is whether we have the batsmen to outscore the English. According to every conceivable statistical criterion, our young batting line-up is inferior to its more experienced English counterpart. If Australia is to have any chance in this series, then at least two of our young batsmen must come of age,
much like Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh did in 1989. Phil Hughes, the young hobbit with a first-class record worthy of the last great Golden Age of Australian Batsmanship, is our best hope. But if the prospect of Australia’s Ashes fate resting on his shoulders worries us, then perhaps we can comfort ourselves with this thought: has Steve Waugh’s judgment of a cricketer ever been wrong?
