Friday 22 April 2011

Nearly men #3: Alan Mullally

'Nearly man' is perhaps pushing it for a bowler who reached number 2 in the ODI rankings at one time. But like so many bowlers of the 90s, Mullally is best known for promising so much more than he delivered. We'd heard all about this guy before he made his Test debut, and it sounded exciting: a pacy chap with English nationality who'd played most of his cricket in Australia. Well, from the moment we saw him we knew there were some problems:

1. He really wasn't that fast.
2. He was left handed, but he didn't have an inswinger, which is almost essential. Instead he had the most useless of all balls, the outswinger delivered from over the wicket. It meant on the rare occasions he did get the ball in the off stump channel it usually veered away when it could have taken the outside edge (this did make him very economical, hence the ODI success). After a couple of predictably wicketless but cheap spells, he'd usually come round the wicket, by which time the away swing had dried up and everything drifted into the pads.
3. He couldn't bat or field.

And yet I loved Alan Mullally. The main reason was that, like every proud Australian Englishman, he had a bit of mongrel about him. He might not have been that good, but he wasn't going to let that stop him competing as hard as he could. It made a stirring counterpoint to the Caddicks and Tufnells who really should have been good, but rarely summoned the aggression they needed. He was the kind of guy who sarcastically wrung his hand in pain when Rahul Dravid, on 150 and mostly scored off him, didn't time a straight drive back at him. He bowled non-stop bouncers at Sachin Tendulkar no matter how many times he was obliterated out of the ground.

He averaged five with the bat. Look how he got out to Glenn McGrath, almost exclusively:


Where other players edged immaculately delivered leg cutters, Mullally tried to hook him for six. It's called backing yourself.

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