He has been the forgotten man of Australia’s Ashes campaign and retirement celebrations, but Damien Martyn made a shock reappearance in the SCG dressing rooms after Australia wrapped up their 5-0 win. Alex Brown writes in The Age that Martyn surprised his team-mates by turning up an hour after stumps.
Wearing jeans and a T-shirt, the reclusive West Australian walked into the rooms to a roaring reception and was immediately embraced by Australia's opener Matthew Hayden. Martyn later sat in front of Hayden's locker, and had his first face-to-face conversation with Ricky Ponting, the Australian captain and best man at Martyn's wedding, since his shock retirement after the Adelaide Test. "It was emotional," said one team source. "As emotional as anything you saw out on the field yesterday."
Just as emotional would have been Justin Langer’s rendition of the Australian victory anthem, Beneath the Southern Cross. As Andrew Stevenson writes in The Age, the tradition has an interesting history.
Southern Cross passed, first from Rod Marsh to Allan Border and then to David Boon. But where did it come from? Talk to Ian Chappell, Marsh advised. Chappell, the former Australian captain, was happy to put his hand up for bringing it into the Australian dressing room. But, poet he is not.
Such dressing-room customs are hard for us outsiders to understand, explains John Harms, also in The Age. The inner sanctum of Australian cricket, Harms says, remains a mystery.
One of the only things we mortal outsiders can observe with any confidence is that the inner sanctum is very, very inner. So inner that, in recent times, I reckon the Australian team has become a cult. Not everyone is accepted. I once asked Rod Marsh whether some cricketers were the victims of circumstance: had things gone their way they'd have had long and successful Test careers. I mentioned Martin Love, Stuart Law and Jamie Cox. "There's no luck," he assured me. "If you're good enough, you'll play 80 Tests." Such self-congratulatory logic dismisses anyone outside those who have done it.
