There is being tired and then there’s exhaustion. A fast-paced game of basketball, soccer or AFL can leave its players physically spent – barely able to lift their legs for a good hour after it is over.
A Test match in cricket is an entirely different proposition. Five days of intense competition in 40C heat has left many a cricketer broken not only physically but also mentally.
Except, perhaps, for an express fast bowler like Brett Lee or Shoaib Akhtar, the explosiveness of action is not on par with that which takes place again and again during sports like rugby (either one) or AFL.
In those games, the amount of energy expelled in a mere 20-minute period can be extraordinary. To put a sadist’s perspective on it – where the physical demands of those sports are like getting 20 quick lashes, cricket’s demands are akin to water torture.
The ‘drip, drip, drip’ at first seems manageable, easy even, just like your first hour in the field or at the crease when batting. It’s the sometimes grinding nature of Test cricket, the sense that it is going on forever, which can be so agonising.
Even amateur cricketers have horror stories of the six-hour days spent fielding in 40C heat as the opposition piles up a giant score and a relieving breeze never seems to appear. I have played some torrid Australian football matches where, after four bruising quarters as a solo ruckman my body was covered in bruises, cuts and scrapes, and my petrol tank was left below the red line.
While I limped for several days after I was generally feeling energetic again within a few hours. Yet, after back-to-back cricket games on a weekend bowling 35-plus overs off the long run in sweltering heat, it often took 36 hours before I felt back to normal.
It’s the dehydration and the lengthy direct exposure to harsh sunlight which tips you over the edge.
Everyone who has played cricket likely at some point has had someone joke about how the sport “basically involves just standing around, jogging every now and then, and then stopping for a lunch break”.
To them I’ve said, only half joking: “The next time it hits 40C, go outside in your garden at midday and stand in the sun for two hours. Just two hours. Then get back to me.”
That great orb in the sky, when it’s in a furious mood and unleashing its most heinous rays, has a way of slowly sucking the life out of you. The temperature gauge might read 35C, and feel like that in the shade, but out there in the sun’s direct vision, it feels more like 45C.
After a six-over spell or two hours of batting under a helmet, it seems closer to 55C. International cricketers frequently suffer heat exhaustion, even in this modern age of ice vests and teams of medical support staff.
Sometimes there is just no way around it. When your teammates need you to stay out on the field to help win a game your choice is either to let them down, and risk losing not just their respect but also your career, or to push your body into dangerous territory.
Sometimes, in the pursuit of victory, players take their bodies to a place from which they cannot recover for quite some time. Look no further than the second Test between Australia and South Africa in Adelaide in November 2012.
There is a photo from the final day of Australian paceman Peter Siddle on his haunches cradling his head, clearly in distress, as skipper Michael Clarke leans over him.
Siddle had just taken the second of his wickets in that session as he heroically battled fatigue to try to bowl Australia to victory.
The Victorian sent down a remarkable 64 overs in that match – 386 times he charged to the crease, contorted his body and then hurled the ball as fast as his body would allow.
In the end, that effort was for nothing – South Africa managed to withstand the charge of Siddle and his bowling cohorts to secure a draw. All that endeavour, all that sacrifice, all that pain and he didn’t even get a result, whether victory or defeat. Just a hollow sense of futility.
It is this kind of scenario which prompts many non-cricket followers to brand the sport as ‘mad’ or ‘pointless’. Yet, for us fans, it is these circumstances we long for and, when they arrive, cherish. Siddle may not have earned his side a win but he inspired with his indomitable human spirit.
Australians love to think of our country as a nation of triers, of people who don’t easily quit. It is partly for this reason that the courageous acts of players like Siddle prompt such a sense of pride, even in the face of a drawn match.
Forever cricket followers will revere batsman Dean Jones for his 210 against India in Madras in 1986, even though it also did not secure Australia a win, with the Test ending in a tie.
Madras, now known as Chennai, has one of the most oppressive climates of any city on the planet, with burning temperatures and extreme humidity. Jones endured these horrendous conditions for 503 minutes in making his double ton.
In the process he was reduced to a dehydrated mess.
Jones would say in an interview, many years later, that even though the Test ended in a tie, Australia celebrated it like they had won. Clearly, to encounter such foreign and confronting circumstances and emerge still standing was a victory.
In Test cricket, you have to overcome not just your opponents but also the elements, the grinding passage of time and the protestations of your body. You must have skill. But that will mean nothing without endurance, persistence and heart.
Even spectators need endurance for the cricket. Fuel up for the summer with NEW Ice Break Refuel – it’s real coffee packed with protein. Bring it On!
Marcus Stoinis produced his first IPL century and it was a beauty. He went 6, 4, 4, 4 to finish off the Lucknow Super…
Xavier Bartlett has been permission to extend his cricketing education with a spell of T20s in England, playing in the Blast competition for Kent…
Three-Test spinner Matthew Kuhnemann has signed with Tasmania in a bid for red-ball game time ahead of Australia's tour of Sri Lanka next summer.…
Last week, you read about the Matt XI, a compilation of the best cricketers ever to represent the name Matt. And to be fair,…
The Aussie needed every centimetre of his height and reach to reel that one in!
Royal Challengers Bengaluru needed 21 off the final over...but after three sixes, a caught and bowled and a run out, Mitchell Starc's Kolkata had…
