Clarrie Grimmett, Shane Watson moving down the order and Shane Warne being lambasted on social media are all in the firing line for today’s Six and Out.
1. Clarrie Grimmett was born on 25 December 1891
It is said that being born on Christmas Day denotes a special future. If this true, then it certainly applies to Clarrie Grimmett who was born on 25 December 1891.
Grimmett is New Zealand’s gift to Australian cricket. Bill O’Reilly, never short of a pertinent comment, once noted that Grimmett ‘must have been the best Christmas present Australia ever received from that country.’
Grimmett was born and bred in Wellington. The first representative side he played for was the Wellington Primary Schoolboys XI. He played grade cricket in Wellington as a youngster and represented Wellington at the senior level when he was 17.
There was no cricket future for him in New Zealand, as the nation did not play Test cricket until the 1930s. Grimmett knew he was a gifted spinner and in 1914, to further his chances of playing at the highest levels, he migrated to Australia.
He played club cricket in Sydney. He married and lived in Melbourne where he represented Victoria. But it was in South Australia, along with Don Bradman who later came to the state from NSW to establish a business career as a stockbroker, that Grimmett flourished.
He was 33 when he first played Test cricket, as the successor to the NSW spinner Arthur Mailey. He was an instant success. No bowler in Test history has taken 200 Test wickets in fewer than 40 Tests. His last series was in South Africa in 1936 where he took 44 wickets.
For reasons that have never been explained, although Don Bradman attempted a specious series of arguments justifying the decision, Grimmett never played for Australia again.
Bill O’Reilly never forgave Don Bradman for dropping his ‘great mate’ and forcing O’Reilly to bear the burden of a weak Australian attack (with Frank Ward trying unsuccessfully to emulate Grimmett) on the 1938 tour of England when the youngster Len Hutton created a record innings in a Test match against the visitors.
I once asked Bill O’Reilly whether the fact that Grimmett was originally from New Zealand was held against him. O’Reilly assured me that Grimmett became a dinky-di Australian. He felt that Grimmett’s criticisms of Bradman, and his ability to dismiss him on several occasions when they played on opposite sides, might have caused some problems.
Grimmett, whose name denotes a certain fierce intensity, was famous for his devotion to the craft of bowling tight leg-spinners. There were the famous stories of his dog retrieving the balls Grimmett used when practising.
He spent years perfecting his top-spinner, the deadly flipper, a delivery that Richie Benaud, Grimmett’s successor, perfected too.
Arthur Mailey bowled like a millionaire, enticing batsmen to hit sixes in the hope (and likelihood) of them holing out from their excessive optimism. Clarrie Grimmett bowled like a miser. He calculated how many deliveries he averaged each wicket and aimed to bowl these deliveries as cheaply as possible. His method worked in that he averaged a phenomenal six wickets a match over his first class career.
Ashley Mallett, who was coached by Grimmett and who has written extensively and affectionately about him, recalls that Grimmett worked out that driving through the long main street in Adelaide at 27mph enabled him to get the sequence of green lights.
This methodical and pragmatic approach to life matters was the essence of his success as a bowler. In the thousands of deliveries he bowled in characteristic round-arm and low-slung manner, he did not ball one no-ball or wide in his entire career.
Cricinfo’s Steven Lynch has nominated England’s Marcus Tresothick, another New Zealander Hedley Howarth and the Pakistani Mansoor Akhtar as other prominent Test cricketers who were born on Christmas Day.
But none of them could match the achievements of Clarrie Grimmett.
2. Shane Watson should be moved down the batting order
Last week I suggested that Steve Smith should move himself up the batting order to no. 3 to fill a position that has been essentially unfilled, in terms of positive returns, since Ricky Ponting retired.
The Australian tradition has been to play the best attacking batsman in the side in this position. A brilliant no. 3 immediately lifts a batting side. Think Don Bradman, Neil Harvey, Ian Chappell, Ricky Ponting.
The selection of Joe Burns has complicated the matter of who should bat no. 3 for Australia. Burns has opened with success. He has batted down the order with success.
And, apparently, he gets nervous before batting, rather line Normie O’Neill. This probably is an argument to bat him higher than, say, the no. 6 position which is often used to ease younger players into Test cricket.
Ian Healy, a Queenslander like Burns and someone who knows his game well, insists that Burns should bat at no. 3.
The batting order is the perogative of the Australian skipper. Over to you Steve Smith …
3. Shane Watson and Brad Haddin are now battling for their spots in the Australian XI
The promotion of Steve Smith as captain, in the absence of Michael Clarke, and the inclusion of Joe Burns for this Test and the selection of the now-injured Mitchell Marsh in the previous two Tests, indicates that the Australian selectors are about creating an XI with growth in it for the next Ashes series.
Chris Roger, with two sound batting displays in the last Test, has probably consolidated his position as an opener.
Shane Watson, though, is clearly not a long-term answer for the no. 3 position, and increasingly he is not even a short-term answer. It will be fascinating to see where Steve Smith bats him in the Melbourne Test.
Mitchell Marsh, if fit, will fill the role of the fourth seamer/lower order batsman that Watson has in the past. Watson is more a batsman who bowls. But the more batting failures he has, the more important his bowling becomes for his continued career in the Australian XI.
You have the feeling with Watson that he is one injury that curtails his bowling away from the end of his career with the Australian XI. In his last 10 series, he has averaged over 40 only once. Not good enough for someone in the premier batting position in an Australian XI.
Brad Haddin is in a similar sort of situation. Wicket-keepers are now expected to be front-line batsmen and lately the runs have dried up for Haddin. He is 37. His best batting days, which were sometimes terrific are past him.
Even Darren Lehmann has suggested that unless Haddin starts scoring some useful runs, someone (Peter Nevill?) will be drafted to replace him.
Steve Smith’s sure-handed assumption of the captaincy, too, has worked against Brad Haddin. Smith, it seems, does not need a veteran like Haddin to help him through his first few Tests.
Nathan Lyon has entrenched his position in the Australian XI with a series of excellent performances. Before the series against India started there was talk of Lyon being dropped for another spinner. That talk has gone.
In must be said, though, that Lyon has benefited from the captaincy of Steve Smith and Michael Clarke. They are not afraid to use Lyon early or late, and this confidence has inspired Lyon to become a key part of Australia’s bowling attack.
4. We have all been Warned. Good.
Mitchell Starc’s girlfriend, Alyssa Healy, wasn’t amused when Shane Warne suggested that the bowler looked a bit soft during his bowling stint in India’s first inning of the engrossing Adelaide Test. In the modern way she (with some irony) tweeted: ‘a danger of anything positive.’
Any danger of something positive….
— Alyssa Healy (@ahealy77) December 17, 2014
Michael Clarke tweeted Warne before the Alyssa Healy intervention: ‘Spot on buddy.’
But with Alyssa Healy’s tweet both the cricket champions capitulated. Clarke took down his tweet. And Warne went into an elaborate and unconvincing sort of explanation that he had somehow been misunderstood.
Nonsense. What Warne said was correct. Starc’s body language was soft. The Indian batsmen sensed that this body language translated into a bowler who was out of sorts with his action and they started to belt him around the field.
As a kid in New Zealand we were always coached that even if you can’t be a player, at least look the part. Looks, body language, matter. Shane Warne himself is the exemplar of this truth. No one was more cocky or challenging of batsmen, even when they seemed to have got his measure, than Warne.
He is taking this attitude into the commentary box. He is good value to those of us who look to hear about the games within the game. So don’t back down, Warnie. Keep on throwing those verbal zooters, even if some of the players and their loved ones aren’t impressed.
We love being Warned, even if others under the spotlight resent it.
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