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Don’t get me wrong. I like George Bailey. But the Australian T20 captain had blinkers on during Brad Hodge’s return to international cricket at the MCG.
Hodge made an emotional and bittersweet comeback to the Australian side after being overlooked in all international formats for the previous six years. In front of a home crowd of over 64,000, mostly adoring Victorians who have long lamented Hodge’s treatment by selectors, Bailey ensured that Hodge didn’t even get to bat.
Set 131 by England to win, the stage was set for a long Hodge innings under no great pressure. A veteran of over 200 Twenty20 matches in leagues around the world, Hodge has batted almost exclusively in the top four. He’s the kind of stable player to build an innings around.
Last night, he was inexplicably shunted down the order and out of sight. Australia ran down the total with two wickets gone, while Hodge sat by the boundary line, padded up and waiting.
Hodge does sometimes open the batting, but sending out the same opening pair as last time was the right move – you want continuity, and even a small total will inevitably cost a wicket or two. The natural position for Hodge was at first drop.
Instead, when Aaron Finch was lbw, Glenn Maxwell walked to the crease. The Show That Might Turn Out To Be Quite Good But Is Currently Getting Mixed Reviews is a fearsome striker of the ball, but hasn’t done much to prove he belongs up the order rather than lurking off-puttingly in the depths below.
Watching Maxwell hole out is about as surprising as seeing Hamlet die. The score was 2/53 – less than 80 runs required, with Cam White having cruised to 41 and looking ominous. We got no Hodge. Instead we got the captain – the man who sets the batting order. Top work, George.
It was all too familiar. Hodge is legendary in Australian cricket for being the unluckiest batsman of the modern era – a prolific and highly skilled first-class player overlooked for higher duties time and again, ultimately limited to six Tests despite a double century against South Africa and an average nudging 56.
Every time a vacancy opened in the top order, people would mention Hodge. Every time there would be a different choice, some logical, some arbitrary. He would look back to Victoria and tick off a few more of his 51 first-class hundreds.
By 2009, when a weak and rebuilding Australian Test team still wouldn’t take him on, Hodge signed off from first-class cricket with a chase of 384 against South Australia. He reinvented himself as a limited-overs batsman, and has since become the most prolific T20 scorer in the world. Think about it – no one on earth has scored more runs in the format.
It made no difference. Hodge played 25 ODIs, the last in 2007. He played eight T20 internationals, the last (before yesterday) in 2008. He scored solidly, but was exiled once more. While Australia got punted out of T20 World Cups, lost matches to minnows, and refused to take the format seriously, Hodge just kept on scoring, and kept on being ignored.
The sense of injustice that marks a true Hodge fan comes about because these omissions were never explained. There was the odd mumble about youth, from selectors who smirked behind their hands while picking a 41-year-old spinner. But mostly there was silence – a strange alternate world where we all just accepted that one of the format’s premier players would never be considered.
That’s what has made this international return mean something, even in a couple of low-profile games at the cynical end of the summer. Even to make this bit-part team, alongside James Muirhead with six domestic T20s to his name, Hodge had to rely on a perfect storm of injuries, precautions, and trips to South Africa.
Finally, with so many others out of contention, the selectors could no longer exclude him. Perhaps they’ve also had some recent revelations about older players, after Brad Haddin and Chris Rogers flipped their wrinkly middle fingers at age concerns.
I’m aware of what the stern-mouthed puritans will say: the team is sacrosanct, individuals don’t matter, no room for sentiment, blah blah my kidney fell out. But cricket is nothing without its crowd, and there is a duty there to please them. Cricket is nothing without its stories, and there is a duty to let them flourish.
In a changing team like the T20 side, there is no set batting order to accommodate. There is no stability to destabilise. T20 is adaptable, fluid cricket, and an entertainment sport.
Letting Hodge bat in his natural position, at three or four, would have caused no detriment to the team, while giving a mighty pay-off to the crowd and the player. Bailey’s 60 from 28 balls was spectacular, but there was one man the MCG really wanted.
Then there’s the bigger picture. With various first-choice players to return from the Test set-up in April, Hodge is only an outside chance for the T20 World Cup. He now has a solitary chance, in the final T20 in Sydney this Sunday, to make any impression at the crease. Whose places are already secure? Maxwell. Bailey. Finch.
If there’s no World Cup for Hodge, these two games may be all he gets, a tiny late gesture mixing apology and farewell. After a career in which he has so consistently had the roughest available deal, Hodge at least deserves this.
We were perfectly set for his innings: the home crowd, the full stands. He had a great lead-up in the field – bowling the first over, his brilliant cover catch, his more brilliant direct-hit run out, his hilarious attempted boundary save. It was his moment, and Melbourne’s, to express something to each other.
Instead, we got Anticlimax George, renowned outside England as a decent and considerate man, but unfortunately in this instance emotionally tone-deaf. Hodge’s moment slipped by, and his slender chance of making a World Cup case was halved.
The only thing that lessens the frustration is resigned pessimism. That is to say, given the story so far, even if Hodge scores the first ever T20 double century in Sydney, he’ll probably be dropped next time round for Shaun Marsh.
Shaun, you know, will be in a great headspace, fresh off a really promising 13. We’ll all be excited by his potential.