Wicketkeeper Rodney, who held on bravely to thunderbolts from speed demons Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson, should be also remembered for his commendable work in the coaching sphere across continents
Rodney Marsh during an England A net session at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore on February 8, 2004. Pic/Getty Images
Rodney Marsh, whose death was followed by the incomprehensible passing away of Shane Warne on a cruel March 4, didn’t end up getting the lengthy tributes that the king of spin did.
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But Marsh’s deeds—on the playing field and off it as a retired cricketer —were spread over continents and thoroughly deserving of the finest of accolades. To top it all, he was a character with a deep sense of history.
If Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson are credited for Australia’s grip on the Ashes urn in 1974-75 and 1975 after the Poms (that’s how Marsh described the Englishmen) held it in the 1970-71 and 1972 rubbers, their batsmen ought to be hailed as well. Ditto, the glove work of Marsh. The English batsmen were tasked to score runs against some fearsome bowling, but remember Marsh had to do some seriously painful collections behind the stumps. “It hurts like hell, but I love it,” he is believed to have said when asked about ’keeping to Lillee and Thomson’s thunderbolts. And it shouldn’t be forgotten that while Lillee ended his Test career at the conclusion of the fifth and final Test at Sydney in January 1984 as the world’s highest wicket-taker with 355 scalps, Marsh bid goodbye to the traditional form as the record holder of dismissals behind the wicket with the same number.
Marsh came into the side replacing Brian Taber, who was the team’s No.1 ‘keeper on the 1969-70 tours of India and South Africa. He didn’t expect him to get picked and dozed off in a Queensland motel (he was in the Sunshine state for Western Australia’s November 13-16, 1970 Sheffield Shield game at the Gabba) only to be woken up in the morning by his wife Roslyn to be told about his selection in the Australian team. In his autobiography You’ll Keep, Marsh wrote about taking a beer bottle from the fridge, waking up his non-drinking roommate Derek Chadwick and raising a toast to his Australia selection.
Of course, this is not the beer-related story that occupied pride of place in the Rodney Marsh story. The one that did was his record-breaking 45 cans consumed on a Sydney to London air journey for the 1983 World Cup via Singapore and Bahrain. Doug Walters held the previous record of drinking 44 cans in the company of Marsh for the 1977 Ashes. That was 12 years before David Boon gulped down 52 cans.
Marsh only felt smashed when the aircraft door opened at Heathrow as he revealed in his 1984 book Gloves, Sweat and Tears. Marsh could smash the ball around on the highest stage. In the 1972-73 Adelaide Test, he scored 118 to become the first Australian wicketkeeper to score a Test century. He missed one by eight runs two seasons prior at Melbourne in his debut series when his captain Bill Lawry amazingly declared the innings closed with the rookie wicketkeeper on 92 not out. “I wasn’t at all upset about it. In fact, I was so delighted to have at last done something worthwhile in the series,” Marsh wrote in You’ll Keep.
What Marsh was blue about was not being picked to lead Australia in the early 1980s and he believed that fellow West Australian Kim Hughes didn’t deserve to lead the country.
His 1983-84 retirement along with the exits of Greg Chappell and Lillee left a deep hole to fill. But he continued to serve the game as selector, commentator and probably more significantly through coaching and setting up cricket academies in Australia, England, India and the UAE. He was also England’s selector during the 2005 Ashes series when they beat Marsh’s country for the urn after 18 years.
He could spot talent and mentor young players like only a few could. Someone told me that he had only one look at a 15-year-old Ricky Ponting at the academy in Adelaide and declared that he would play for Australia. He had to deal with the media a bit, but he didn’t appear to enjoy it. In 1993, when he was still involved with the academy in Adelaide, Marsh told a reporter that he didn’t think too much of Michael Slater’s hundred at Lord’s in 1993 because it was scored off an ordinary England attack and that Slater would have made better 30s and 40s in Sheffield Shield cricket than that Lord’s 152.
He also said that the county bowlers were pie throwers. When the English pressmen read that, some of them contacted Marsh. He claimed that his views were twisted out of context and he certainly didn’t use the words pie throwers. The reporter—Andrew Ramsey—a friend of mine, wrote in his book (The Wrong Line—what happens on tour sometimes needs to be told) that he couldn’t have been so creative with words at such an early stage of his journalistic career and Marsh had certainly uttered this. When they met years later at a hotel lobby in Manchester, Marsh wanted that old issue to be settled in the hotel’s car park. My friend “politely declined.” On Wednesday, Andrew told me that Marsh and he patched up and in fact Marsh told Cricket Australia that he would only speak to him and not the rest because he was a “bloody good bloke.”
And that’s exactly how Marsh’s mates will remember him.
mid-day’s group sports editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stance. He tweets @ClaytonMurzello
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper
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