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The achievement of Nathan Lyon in becoming the first Australian off-spinner to take 200 wickets is one of the most heartwarming triumphs in recent sporting history.
It’s not just a triumph for Lyon himself, and not just a triumph for the finger-tweaker’s art, a much-despised practice in Antipodean bowling ever since Arthur Mailey used to take his “boys” Clarrie Grimmett and Bill O’Reilly around to schools to rough up any kid caught trying to bowl out the front of his hand.
No, it’s also a triumph for the Unlikely Champion, for all those sporting heroes who scale the heights despite unprepossessing appearance and negative preconceptions. Nathan Lyon is an inspiration for everyone who wants to believe that a man can still become a top-flight Test cricketer even if he’s got the muscle definition of a starving pigeon and the general appearance of a middle-aged Woolies trolley boy.
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In celebration of Lyon’s milestone, I have therefore selected my Unlikely XI, a team of great cricketers who, judged purely on first impressions, should never have been able to become great cricketers.
Lawrence Rowe
Rowe made history by hitting a double century and a single century on Test debut, and two years later played one of the great innings: 302 against England at Bridgetown.
Feats suggestive of a man born to play cricket: the fact Rowe was allergic to grass makes his career more an act of perverse defiance of fate.
Colin Milburn
Ollie had but a brief career as England opener – cut short by a car accident that cost him his left eye – but his appearance in the Test ranks was a win for every rotund village cricketer who ever dreamed of glory far beyond the capacity of his own anatomy.
Eighteen stone of good-natured bluster, Milburn hit the ball harder than anyone and could bat well past the time most men of his silhouette would be back in the pub. Of course when he did make it to the bar he made up for lost time.
David Boon
Boonie made his debut at the age of 24, and he already looked like he’d been enjoying an extravagant retirement for several years. No batsman was more reliable, none more brave, none more fearless in the face of brutish fast bowling – and none more reminiscent of a moustachioed beer keg.
Boon was so barrel-like he made Allan Border look athletic, yet he could bat for days and leap like a salmon to take catches at short leg.
Eddie Paynter
A tiny man who didn’t break into first-class cricket until the relatively advanced age of 24, Payner lost the top joints of two fingers in an accident early on, but it didn’t stop him carving out a place for himself in history.
He averaged 59.23 in Tests – the fifth highest of all time – and an incredible 84.42 against Australia. He is best remembered for one remarkable feat in adversity. In the fourth Test of the Bodyline series, he came in with England in dire straits and made 83 not out, having spent the previous night in hospital with tonsillitis.
Mansur Ali Khan, the Nawab of Pataudi
Like Milburn, Pataudi suffered permanent damage to his eyesight in a car accident. What followed was astonishing, as he took on the captaincy of India at the age of 21, eventually leading his country in 40 of his 46 Tests.
Pataudi hit six Test centuries with one eye, pulling his cap down over the damaged right one, and gained a reputation as India’s greatest captain, steering them to their first overseas Test victory and ridding the nation of its cricketing inferiority complex.
Warwick Armstrong
The Big Ship, nicknamed for his usefulness as a flotation device, didn’t start out as an unlikely champion, but when he resumed his Test career after the Great War, at over forty years old and 21 stone, he seemed better suited for sumo than cricket.
Armstrong made a concerted effort to lose weight while sailing to England in 1921, but arrived weighing two kilos more than at journey’s start. Nevertheless, this most colossal and inflexible all-rounder was the guiding force behind one of Australia’s most powerful combinations.
Bob Taylor
Taylor played his first Test at the age of 29, and his second at 36. More than half his 56 Tests were played after he reached 40, and if his neat style behind the wicket and cussedness with the bat spoke of a typical wicketkeeper, his old-age-pensioner appearance was less typical of an elite international sportsman.
In the 1970s and 80s, when cricket was becoming fully professional, Taylor gave a little bit of hope to all late bloomers.
Merv Hughes
Above the neck Merv was every bit the quintessential fast bowler: all bristling mo and ferocious glare, he stood in a proud tradition of Aussie quicks from Spofforth to Lillee. It was further down the frame that one started to wonder how the man could survive in his profession.
With that generous stomach jutting out and arriving at the crease a second before the rest of him did, it seemed miraculous that he not only bowled fast, but tirelessly took on workloads that have broken men of far more svelte proportions.
It was no surprise that he ended his career with bone grinding on bone in his knees: what was incredible was that those knees had carried his impressive bulk through over 200 Test wickets first.
Malcolm Marshall
In an age when the West Indies were synonymous with the towering terror of their peerless pace attack, with menacing giants like Joel Garner and Curtly Ambrose putting the fear of god into the rest of the world, the scariest of them all was skinny little Malcolm Marshall.
Dwarfed by his imposing colleagues, Marshall was faster, meaner and more skilful than any of them, scything through batting orders in a manner calculated to put to rest any myths about the ideal fast bowling physique.
Nathan Lyon
The GOAT himself, you know him well. Bald, skinny, mild-mannered and perversely good at getting batsmen out.
Bhagwath Chandrasekhar
At six years old, Chandra contracted polio, which left his right arm weak and withered. He played table tennis and badminton left-handed, but on the cricket field turned that damaged right arm into a lethal weapon, whipping down fast leg-breaks and googlies that flummoxed the best of batsmen.
It made Chandrasekhar a decisive factor in such momentous occasions as India’s first series win in England and first Test victory in Australia.