Tall cricketers are supposed to look lumbering. Those heavy frames are fine thundering in to the bowling crease, but in any other application they’re awkward. Strap pads and helmets to them, give them a bat like a teacher’s ruler in their giant hands, and they become comical.
Cameron Green has that size yet none of the awkwardness.
When the 21-year-old batted against India’s tourists for Australia A at Drummoyne Oval on Monday, he built 114 unbeaten runs batting at number five, in a performance more composed than his experienced teammates.
Most great batsmen are short: Gavaskar, Lara, Tendulkar, Bradman. That stature is harder to bowl to because the margin for error is smaller: the gap between the ball bouncing to shin height, knee height, hip height, shoulder height.
Once players start to get north of six feet (1.83m) tall, they tend to lose balance at the crease. They fall over towards the line of the ball, or they lean back trying to find power. They have large feet unused to small movements.
As a spectator of course the first thing you notice about Green is that height: 198 centimetres and built like a centre-half back. What you notice much later, after he’s been batting for a while, is how good his balance is.
He stands with poise as the ball comes down. He shifts his weight as he needs to. Bowlers do have more room to hit a difficult length, but the flip side is that his reach and stride give him more chances to change that length, if he’s fast enough. And he is.
All day against the Indians his footwork was excellent. Fast bowler Mohammed Siraj, in particular, bowled well; Green’s stride countered him. Ravi Ashwin’s off-spin and Kuldeep Yadav’s left-arm wrist spin worked in tandem, bowling immaculate lengths; Green came down the track repeatedly and played sensible shots to the pitch of the ball.
Loading
There was still a surreal aspect to the visual. Watch a skyscraper chatting to a regular batsman mid-pitch and your cricket brain insists that it’s a lower-order partnership. In the middle order we’re used to the sight of a fast bowler as 12th man bringing drinks to a couple of compact batsmen. Here the enormous Harry Conway ran drinks out to a batsman who looked at him eye to eye.
But as his partnership of 104 with Tim Paine wore on, the numbers about Green’s height and age became less important than numbers like a fifth first-class century about to arrive in a career 20 matches old, or a batting average rising that day above 50.
This was, after all, an innings played after touted opener Will Pucovski was out for one, then Test players Joe Burns, Travis Head, Marcus Harris and Nic Maddinson were gone by the time the team reached 98.
Still 149 runs behind the Indian team, it was down to the young player with Australia’s Test captain as his support. Green was dropped at slip on 24 and later edged a ball near the keeper, but was otherwise entirely secure through 65 overs from lunch to stumps.
On the first day when I asked about the pitch, the curator’s smile had a bit of devil in it. “It’s fast. And it’ll only get faster.” He wasn’t wrong.
Umesh Yadav gave Green a barrage with a leg gully in place. Kartik Tyagi bowled the best bouncer of the day, searing past Green’s chest. The batsman swayed away with the same composure as when he defended.
He wasn’t ruffled when Paine fell for 44, nor when Michael Neser ran himself out insisting on a sharp single with Green on 99. Even after he raised his bat for his hundred, Green didn’t let loose.
All afternoon he had conducted a go-slow, knowing his team trailed and the best thing he could do was stay around. By the end of the day, the Australians were 39 in front and he was still there. In short, he played like a Test batsman.
Which isn’t to say he was all patience and no shots. When a boundary ball arrived, he hit it hard. There’s something hugely satisfying about seeing a giant human lump his way into a pull shot or walk down to bash a spinner for six.
Loading
Good enough for Test selection
You might not wax lyrical about Green’s elegance — his hundred came up with a cover drive that had the grace and subtlety of a crane dropping a fridge — but he got the job done, every time.
Which is the same thing he has done all this season: be effective, repeatedly, to the point that he’s now a strong candidate for Test selection. The only factor counting against him is where he would fit.
Marnus Labuschagne, Steve Smith and Travis Head are locks from numbers three to five. Matthew Wade should be the same at six, and showed again last Sunday night the folly of underrating him.
Wade has been criminally underused by Australia over the past two years while in the form of his life. Nobody in that time has made piles of runs across all formats with his consistency, but he hasn’t been picked in ODIs and has been limited to cameos in Twenty20 cricket.
Filling in as captain on Sunday for a T20 International, he promptly popped himself back up to open the batting, resuming his pairing with D’Arcy Short that has been so prolific in the Big Bash for Hobart, and smashed 58 from 32 balls.
Test cricket is a different game, but Wade has been no less effective in the longest forms during his late-career bloom. Never as an opener though, and if he keeps the spot at six in Tests, the openers are the only places open.
Pucovski’s recent record is no less commanding than Green’s, so he should be one of them. Shifting any Test regulars up the order to join him will only kick the can down the road until David Warner comes back from injury.
Green may not be picked for the first match at Adelaide, but at least from here he can’t make his case any stronger.
After play had finished on the second day of the tour match, Pucovski in his training gear was running lap after lap of Drummoyne Oval in the heat, bouncing an Aussie rules football to keep himself interested, getting some miles in his legs after his very brief day on the field.
Green was nowhere to be seen, presumably deep in the change rooms, mixing ice into his drinks or into his bathwater. His work was done.
