When you think of the epic innings of Australian batsmen over history, the list of quality options is not short. Bradman’s 334, Taylor’s unbeaten knock of the same mark, Hayden’s 380, Clarke’s 329, Gillespie’s 201*… you get the picture.
But when you narrow down the epic innings to those that really tested the mental and physical extremities of the batsman, only one sticks out.
Dean Jones’ 210 against India in Chennai (then Madras), in September 1986. It came in the second-ever Tied Test, although those two significant moments aren’t always remembered as being the same match.
‘Deano’s 210 is as far from the top of the Australian Test cricket highest scores as it has ever been. In fact, it comes in at no.43 on the list, at the time of writing, having just been bumped down a spot by Steven Smith’s majestic 215 at Lord’s.
And of all those wonderful knocks above Jones’ 210, there have been many innings like Smith’s in July that will be remembered for all manner of measurements: aesthetics, entertainment, brutality, or even the most textbook-like.
But none will be remembered for its endurance or the toll it took on the player at the time.
The First Test of Australia’s 1986 Tour of India was significant for a number of reasons. Firstly, it was Bob Simpson’s first tour away from Australia with the national side, and he was hell-bent on getting the team into a winning habit when the previous few years had been anything but positive.
Secondly, the match was not just Jones’ first Test back in the side more than two years after his debut, but it was his first Test batting at the crucial no.3 position he made his own for the next few years.
It was a big call from Allan Border at the time. Jones was back in the side for just his third Test, and with scores of 48, 5, 1, and 11 to his name to that point. Behind Border in the middle order where more young players in Greg Ritchie, Greg Matthews, and the Stephen Waugh. Someone had to bat at three, and Border thought Jones was the man.
The one common element in all reflections with players and coaches involved in the Test was the heat. Matthews has said in interviews ever since that the MA Chidambaram Stadium just “radiated heat.” The proverbial concrete canyon.
After Border won the toss and batted, Geoff Marsh and David Boon put on 48 for the first wicket, and then Boon and Jones added 158 for the second, until Boon was out for 122 shortly before stumps. Jones was unbeaten on 56 at the close of play along with nightwatchman Ray Bright.
Day 2 was a very, very different story. Bright had taken a liking to the Indian spinners but had battled in the morning heat and humidity, before ultimately holing out for 30 and admitting years later that he could barely hold the bat. Jones brought up his maiden Test century, and had enjoyed similar success against the tweakers.
Jones and Border then set about building the big partnership that could push the Test out of India’s grasp.
As Jones’ score mounted and mounted, the cramp began enveloping his body. First his hands, then a leg, and then the other leg. After a sweep shot, suddenly his back was cramping.
With the temperature in the forties, and humidity beyond 80%, the conditions in reflections years later were described as being like a furnace, and that walking outside was like being hit with a hot, wet blanket.
Jones told CricInfo back in the early 2000s that he made his last hundred off 66 balls because “I couldn’t run at all.” As the dehydration took hold, his method of operation became block, block, slog, spew, repeat.
By the 170s, he began losing control of his bodily functions. “I knew I was in trouble when I started urinating in my pants and I couldn’t stop it,” Jones told an ABC documentary around the twentieth anniversary of the Test.
It was around the same time that Jones told Border he had to go off, and that he couldn’t continue has he was, holding up the game to vomit every shot, and just not being able to run between the wickets. Border, not realising the seriousness of the situation, thought it just a bad case of food poisoning or nausea, and delivered an immortal line to the ailing Victorian.
“Well go on, off you go then. We’ll get someone tough out here. We’ll get a Queenslander.” Greg Ritchie was next into bat.
After several overs of expletives toward his captain and more boundaries, Jones raised the first double century by an Australian in India, but admitted in the ABC documentary, “I cannot remember going into the dressing room on 202 at Tea. I can’t remember anything.”
Simpson, in the same documentary said, “Every time he came off the field, we had assigned players to do different things for ‘Deano’. As he’d come through, his cap or hat would be removed, his gloves would be removed, someone would take his pads off.
“Someone would strip his clothes, and there would be an ice bath waiting for him.” And when the time came, they’d re-dress him, re-kit him, and send him out the door back on his way.
He was out shortly after Tea for 210, came back into the rooms and was piled straight back into the ice bath. At one point he tried to stand up, collapsed, and woke up again in hospital at one o’clock in the morning on a saline drip.
“My God, I’ve killed him,” was how Border remembered reacting when coming into the rooms after Jones had already been shipped off.
Jones recovered quickly enough to bat in the second innings, as Australia set up a declaration, and he played in both of the rain-affected Second and Third Tests. It says a lot about his state of physical fitness at the time that he was able to bounce back so quickly.
But that innings definitely took a toll. I interviewed Jones late last year on a hot afternoon, and he admitted that nearly thirty years on, he still suffers body shakes and the like whenever the mercury gets into the high 30s.
While a premature retirement isn’t the solution, he or England want, he may be forced into it if he can’t maintain a long run of matches.
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