A Good Man Always Knows His Limitations

Radio broadcaster Kerry O’Keeffe revealed something interesting to me in the press box during the Hobart Test – Justin Langer doesn’t send him a Christmas card.

Langer, the Australian batting coach and former long-time Test opener, holds a lingering grudge against the radio jester that goes back a number of years.

‘Skull’ admitted to once describing the gritty West Australian left-hander as a ‘limited’ batsman.

This was no jibe, no blow aimed below the belt. It was the observation of a cricket expert on the technique and capabilities of one of the best grinders Australia has produced in recent years.

Funny, then, that Langer would be offended by the remark. I take O’Keeffe’s word that the comment was not designed to cut. It was just an observation on Langer’s ‘unflashiness’ summed up neatly in a three-syllable word.

Limited.

Everyone is limited in some regard and it can be as empowering as it is enlightening to recognise and embrace any inadequacy or shortcoming – no matter your vocation.

For an international cricketer, here lies the key to perpetual improvement, and if Langer, particularly given his current mantle, can’t accept that a batsman’s limitations represent the very foundation of a successful career he needs to join a number of his former colleagues who’ve already cleared out their desk drawers and sought employment away from Cricket Australia.

Don’t want to take it from me, then take it from ‘Dirty’ Harry Callahan in Magnum Force: “A good man always knows his limitations.”

Based on Callahan's logic alone, debutant opener Ed Cowan is a good man.

It’s hard not to think that Langer, sitting on high in the Australian viewing room during proceedings at the MCG on Boxing Day, used the word ‘limited’ – or a synonym – as he scrawled notes about Cowan’s 68-run innings.

No matter how you spin it, Cowan’s dig revealed him to be a limited batsman. There was little bluster, barely anything unorthodox and a telling lack of invention.

To say Cowan is limited is not to say he can't bat freely and fluently, just that he sees the value in not always trying to.

He doesn’t have the game of a Warner or Marsh or Clarke, arguably the most expansive batsmen in the Australian line-up at present, but what he does have is a cerebral gift – one that has allowed him to unpick his own game during recent seasons to the point that he has now built himself into a batsman capable of succeeding at the top level.

There’s nothing surer than that had Cowan failed to strip his game back after a move to Tasmania several seasons ago he would not have arrived as he did on the cricket calendar's biggest day.

The 29-year-old’s innings was built around an extraordinary ability to watch the ball pass him by, safe in the knowledge he wouldn’t be dismissed by a delivery that hadn’t even been aimed at his stumps.

Doubtless the guy can cut and hook – and cover drive with ageless style – but in Cowan’s eyes, not every ball is worth flirting with.

It’s a Risk vs. Reward scenario and it seems safe to assume that if Cowan and the man he replaced in the team, Phil Hughes, were managing hedge funds for a living they’d be building markedly different investment portfolios.

It also seems safe to assume that Cowan, a product of The Cranbrook School in Sydney’s leafy Eastern Suburbs, has a more likely predilection for a career in the financial services industry than Hughes, a humble chook fancier from Macksville. But that's beside the point.

What counts is that Cowan may have the game to succeed as a Test opener whereas the jury is still out on Hughes.

Both bat left-handed, but at this point the similarities end. Cowan is straight and conventional and faced 177 balls for his 68 on Boxing Day. If Hughes, all jump and jab and slice, had faced the same number of deliveries he’d have posted somewhere close to 150.

The only problem is that given Hughes’ recent form against New Zealand, and his penchant to fiddle with anything within a bull’s roar of his off stump, he’d have been long odds to face 177 balls in the four-match series against India.

During his first session batting with the coat of arms on his chest and helmet, Cowan was a picture of patience and perseverance. He went to the break unbeaten on 14 – in modern parlance a poor return from almost two hours at the crease.

After lunch he resumed, again circumspect, but willing to play shots to any loose deliveries and began to motor with a neat collection of cover drives, cuts and pulls.

It was heart-warming stuff for anyone who feels upset watching Test batsmen dismissed by rash, poorly chosen shots, shots that are better suited to shorter forms of the game.

Test teams don’t have to score at four runs an over to win a five-day game. Just because Australian teams of yore were capable of it doesn’t make it the norm or something we should expect now.

It makes them exceptional teams packed with once-in-a-generation players. And this is a realisation we, the Australian cricketing public, have to come to.

In the here-and-now we need more steady and less slap. More caution, less curry. Leave not larrup.

That’s what Cowan and similarly limited batsmen like Usman Khawaja bring to the table. They mightn’t always bring the repertoire of shots to light up a wagon wheel like a cheap Christmas tree, but you’d back both to see out a tough 10-over spell before stumps or at any other crucial juncture in a Test match.

Is it perverse to suggest that the way forward for Australian Test cricket is to ignore the bright sparks with every shot in the book for more dour practitioners?

Let the guys who can play ramp shots and reverse sweeps do it in coloured pants where the consequence of an untimely dismissal is far less significant.

How hairbrained is the hyphothesis that limited overs cricket is not for limited players, but Test cricket is for those who’ve recognised and accepted their shortcomings and learned to survive and flourish in spite of them?

Hopefully it’s not hairbrained at all. Hopefully it’s something akin to the mindset of the national selectors and coaching panel.

They need to believe that piles of leaves are for more than Autumn. And that slow and steady can win the race – and a good few Test matches along the way.