Allan Border, arguably Australia‘s greatest captain, talks to TOI about the perils of rapid chopping & changing, how aggressive batting has ruled in this series & the rare art of Jasprit Bumrah…
MELBOURNE: We are sitting at the rain soaked Gabba as the third Test drips away to meaninglessness. The legendary Allan Border, one of Australia’s most durable captains, one of their most determined and prolific batsmen, is lounging on a sofa, staring at the TV screen. There was a time when it was hard to imagine an Australian team without Border as leader. He stepped up at a difficult time, adapted to the role and by the time he left, Australian cricket had metamorphosed into the relentless winning machine it is today.
It’s not for nothing that Australia’s cricketer of the year gets to wear the Allan Border medal. Border is now 69, his memory still sharp as a razor’s edge. He is concerned, though, when asked about his personal health. “Oh, man,” he sighs. “I mean, you know I’ve got Parkinson’s Disease. I’m not 100%. Luckily, I’ve got good medical help.” The talk moves on to cricketing matters, and Border is himself again.
Excerpts from an interview…
In your playing days, you were one of the fittest around, playing 153 consecutive Tests.
Alastair Cook has the most (159). I was very fortunate as far as injury is concerned. The times I did have injury was in the off season. I didn’t ever miss games because of injury. That’s luck. Occasionally I’d have an injury that I probably shouldn’t have played with, but I did, like a broken finger.
You led in 93 Tests, second only to Graeme Smith’s 109…
I just loved the game! So even if there was a little niggle, you tried and played if it wasn’t debilitating. If you had sort of like a knee (issue), you could always field at slip.
Your batting made Australia a powerhouse, but in that World Cup win (1987), it was your left-arm spin that caused Mike Gatting’s brain fade.
I’d probably have bowled more if I wasn’t captain. It wasn’t necessarily a plan to get ‘Gat’ out. He was batting well. He had taken to our spinner, Tim May. If you remember, he had hit a few boundaries and was starting to look comfortable. I didn’t have another spin option. I thought, if I come on, ‘Gat’ might think, ‘I don’t want to get out to a part-timer.’ So, he might change the way he plays. The way I set the field, I knew he was going to try and hit me through the offside. I bowled way outside leg stump, and he had predetermined to play the reverse sweep. It was just so wide, he had to really reach for it and got the top edge. It would have been called wide for sure!
When you see today’s cricketers pulling off these extraordinary shots with such ease, what’s your reaction?
Those days, we hadn’t seen the reverse sweep very often. The guys in England had started to play it in county cricket, because they used to have seven-two fields. That’s how it started. I look at it positively. Even in this series, we’ve seen how Travis Head walks in and the game changes. All of a sudden, you’ve got a deep point, deep backward square. He’s attacking the bowling, attacking even Jasprit Bumrah. I’m watching and thinking, ‘It’s amazing.’
Head looks like he’s batting on a different pitch because he’s being aggressive. He’s backing his ability to play the right shot to the right ball. He might still block a ball or let it go, but his mindset is to attack. Rishabh (Pant) is the same. All the players who seem to be having some success on these difficult pitches have this aggressive mindset. I’m not in awe, but I really respect that mindset. I know myself. I was probably the other way. I would go more defensive.
Is T20 changing Tests, or do these shots just wow more when played in the longer format?
The contest between bat and ball is better in Tests. In T20s, they’re trying to take the ball out of the game. They want to see aggressive batting. The bowler is secondary. In Tests, the bowling has a big say. I’m a real fan of Tests for that reason. It’s a better contest between bat and ball, a truer contest rather than a game set up purely for batting and power hitting. Just look at Bumrah. His presence has lit up this series. I like T20 for what it brings, but it’s a different crowd. I don’t think it has hurt Test cricket.
And you still need your openers to blunt the new ball…
That’s why I say you’ve always had guys like Travis. You think back to different eras, we’ve had guys who’ve been attacking players. You’ve also had guys at the top of the order that take the shine off the new ball. Pujara, for example, from the last two series. It was fantastic the way he blunted the bowling. The rest of the players could bat around him. In T20, you can’t have that.
Do you like what you see about Yashasvi Jaiswal?
I like the backstory. We’re talking about a really tough kid here. For him, with his struggles, to get to the Test team of a country with 1.2 billion people, it’s unbelievable. He’s got incredible talent, obviously that’s come through. He’ll have his moments because he’s new. People haven’t seen much of him. It’ll take a while for bowlers to start working him out. He’s going to be the sort of player who might go through a little (bad) patch, then work himself out and come back a better player. I think he’s very good.
In the early days of your captaincy, Australia was in a period of tough transition. How did you go about the leadership at that point in time? The current Indian and Australian teams are facing a similar situation, with so many senior players who can’t go on for too much longer. What’s the best way to rebuild?
All Australia’s players are 30-plus. They have a rebuild that will have to happen over the next few years. What you don’t want to do is push it. You want to try and do it gradually.
When I think back to 1985, 1986, that period, and two years before that, with Greg Chappell, Dennis Lilee, Rod Marsh, they all went together in one Test (SCG, 1984). The next day we’re playing, they’re not there. Then we had guys going to South Africa, so they’re not playing for Australia. It was a real difficult period in that you changed the whole side. It takes a while to build up.
What we did wrong initially in that period was chop and change the side. Every time someone missed out once or twice, it was ‘move on, move on’. Next, next, next. That’s a totally wrong thing. You’ve got to try and identify players. Even if it’s just potential, if you identify that, you can stick with that for a bit.
Define ‘a bit’? How much time are you prepared to give that potential?
You can’t give someone a year, two years. You can give them a series. You can tell pretty quickly if someone is cut out for it over three Test matches. Two Tests are not enough, three probably is. And then you wait and watch and see their development. It took Steve Waugh a couple of years to find his mark. He ended up getting dropped and then coming back a very, very good player. Nearly everyone who has an international career has been dropped at some stage. Even Bradman. If it’s happened to Bradman, you shouldn’t worry about yourself.
We no longer have a leg-spinner calling the shots in an Australian home summer. Wasn’t Australia supposed to be the land of leg-spin with its hard, bouncy pitches?
I’m surprised India haven’t brought (Yuzvendra) Chahal or Kuldeep Yadav. It’s hard to develop a leg-spinner. A Shane Warne doesn’t come along every day. I don’t think captains use leg-spinners very well. They want them to be like Warne, crowding men around the bat, on the attack. I see captains bring on a leggie and they’ve got bat-pad, two slips and a gully.
Captains are very defensive. They need to realize it’s going to take a while for a young leg-spinner to develop. You need to give him protection. He’s going to bowl one half-tracker or a full toss. They don’t necessarily get blokes out bat-pad or caught at slip. You’ve got to have the captaincy to bring the best out of a leggie. Finger spinners are tighter. It’s a containment thing, and then you wait for the batsmen to get themselves out. Whereas with the leggie, the tendency is to be a bit loose. Warney was different because he was very accurate and could spin the ball. That just shows how hard that art is to master.
So T20’s idea of containment has seeped through to Test captains?
Yes, but the best way to contain is to take wickets. In T20, guys are going to attack. You don’t have to be over-attacking. If you spin a little bit and the guy can’t pick you, that’d be a lot of T20 wickets!
As a fielder, you always had a fantastic, fast throw that threw the batsman off.
I was a baseballer in my younger days. Baseball is based on good throws. When I was a kid, baseball was a winter game, cricket was the summer game. I played both. It’s a good complimentary game for cricket. These days kids pick their sport. In my day you could play three, four sports. I learnt how to get to the ball quickly and get rid of it quickly. That’s baseball.
The most difficult bowler you faced?
Malcom Marshall. He wasn’t very tall, but he skidded on a bit. He would drop his pace when he could swing it a little bit, but then he could bowl rapidly as well. All those West Indians were tough, but Marshall had a very fast arm and was tough to pick.
You spoke about Bumrah lighting up this series.
Bumrah, these days, is on that pedestal. His wrists, his release points are different to other bowlers. Because of that hyperextension, he’s releasing the ball a foot further down than other bowlers. He’s got a unique shuffling run-up, and then the snap of these wrists, he’s amazing. Being different, plus having that skill, it’s a whole different level of difficulty for the batsman.
Bumrah captained in Perth, might captain India again in future…
He’ll do a very good job. In Perth, he used himself properly. Captaincy-wise, the way he set the fields, you couldn’t fault him.
How do you look at pacer-captains in general? Pat Cummins is another.
It’s a tough one, because after your over, you need to go down to fine leg for a break and a drink! As captain, you can’t do that. You need to be at mid-on, directing the field. But Bumrah did well, he’s aggressive as a bowler, but not as aggressive as a person. He’s always got that smile on his face. Cummins too.
Modern batters talk a lot about the problems of having to adjust to different formats. Did you make too many technical adjustments on the fly?
No. The One-Day game wasn’t played differently, we’d just be more aggressive towards the end of the innings. We didn’t really change our games too much. Whereas now, going from T20 to Tests is tough.
How do you remember the tied Test (Madras, Sept ’86)?
Maninder (Singh) still says he got a little inside edge (laughs). Can they take out the old footage and do a ‘Snicko’ on it? I suppose not. We had a couple of heroes. One was Deano with his double hundred. But a lot of people forget Greg Matthews. He got 10 wickets. We declared at 574/7 in our first innings and we still should have lost the game. It just shows how long, drawn out periods in Test cricket can still produce a fantastic game. We should have lost in the last afternoon, but we just somehow hung in there.
I was very worried about Ravi (Shastri). Ravi was someone who was just going to wait, wait, wait and then hit the last ball. But then he took that single, you know. Why? I’ve never asked him, I think I should! I think his theory was, if I took that single and tied the scores, then Maninder would somehow get bat on ball, perhaps.
We didn’t deserve to win, because we made two declarations, and India, to their credit, kept going for the win. That tactical to and fro, the way Ravi played, it was tremendous. Every time we got ahead, he would go boom boom and push the field back.
Sunny (Gavaskar) played one of the best knocks I’ve ever seen. It was like a cover-drive clinic. I’ve never seen Sunny bat better. He made 90. I know he has bigger scores but in the context of this game, where you need 348 on the last day and he starts off at No. 1, makes 90 quickly, you’re in the game then, aren’t you?