When he skipped his way into big-time cricket like a brash featherweight, they called him 'The Jones Boy'. By the time Dean Jones departed the international scene, he was history's man. Australia's batting wunderkind of the 1980s and '90s had done nothing less than revolutionise limited overs cricket.
To a generation of cricket-loving Australian children, Jones was a hero. To Victorians, he was something closer to a sporting martyr. The Melburnian devotion to Jones went far beyond reason. His slights at the hands of national selectors were received like blows to the soul. Years after his retirement, loyalists in the MCG outer persisted with their banners: "Bring back Deano".
Now he will never be back. Jones' death at 59 in Mumbai prematurely robs a family of a husband and father, and removes from the Australian sporting landscape a cult figure.
Few can lay claim to changing the game so definitively in as many facets.
Foremost was his daredevil batting. In one-day internationals, Jones could be subtle and brutal in the space of a minute. He dictated terms, using the width of his crease and the full 360 degrees to set new standards. Australia's unexpected World Cup win of 1987 came under the uncompromising direction of Bob Simpson and Allan Border, but it carried plenty of Jones' hallmarks too.
An image endures of his frenetic, career-best 145 against England in 1990, when he spent the afternoon raining sixes on the old Gabba dog track.
Moments after hoicking poor Martin Bicknell for an absurd, one-handed six over fine leg, Jones threw every ounce of his weight into a lofted, straight drive towards the commentary box containing Richie Benaud and Geoffrey Boycott. Purring with delight, Benaud issued one of his classic lines: "Just reach out and catch it, Geoffrey." At home, it felt like the ball would crash through the screen. Jones was bombastic.
He played 'like a man possessed'
Any consideration of Jones' role in re-imagining the possibilities of the limited overs game should also include ground fielding and running between the wickets — afterthoughts to many of his peers. Jones approached both like a man possessed, stealing and saving runs as though Australia's fortunes depended on it.
His confidence could be mistaken for arrogance, but even some of his outlandish innovations soon became accepted wisdom. When he tried a reverse sweep during the 1987 World Cup, Simpson sent out a message: "If you play that shot again you'll never play for Australia again." Now it's common practice. Until Jones and his polarised sunglasses came along, fieldsmen had squinted into the sun for generations. He was ridiculed for wearing them. Soon enough everybody did. He was a one-man production line of marginal gains.
The highlight videos filling news bulletins today will focus on Jones' audacious strokeplay and his balletic advances towards hapless bowlers. They will miss subtler delights: Jones dashing into the outfield and turning three into two, his arm like a missile launcher aimed an inch above the bails; when the tables were turned, his aggressive running could scramble the minds and limbs of outfielders, causing them to fumble at the crucial moment.
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In cricket and in life he was impetuous, cocky, sometimes obstreperous. He was a maker of enemies and scenes, mostly due to overflows of the same passion that fuelled his brilliance. He nursed a righteous sense of injustice for opportunities he felt he was denied as a player and coach, but he loved the game, and always came back for more.
The insatiable desire to win came from a similar place to his need to prove doubters wrong.
Just as Jones delighted in goading opponents (who could forget his self-endangering demand that Curtly Ambrose remove his white wristbands?), he could be needled too.
The tale of his golfing skirmish with Sir Donald Bradman might be the best. Bradman pointed to trees obscuring the green on a dog-leg par four, telling Jones he hit over them in his youth. Of course, Jones tried and failed, prompting Bradman's observation they'd only been knee-height all those decades earlier.
The MCG would erupt for him like it would for no other
Jones was of a generation of superstars instantly identifiable by their first names: Viv, Javed, Merv, Imran. Thanks to the inefficiencies of Australian informality, Jones was Deano — to teammates and his adoring public. Only Richards out-swaggered Jones on the way to the crease. Like Viv, Jones chewed gum like it was a secondary competition within the game.
To stand on the southern side of the MCG when Jones strutted to the crease during a day-night game was to understand Hemingway's endless platitudes for bullfighters.
The roar of the Melbourne crowd was unlike anything enjoyed by others. A lesser sporting ego would have been carried to the wicket by the noise. Jones felt like it was nothing more than his due. If he got going with that crowd behind him, no bowler was safe. Death in the afternoon? Murder under lights.
It is often said his Test career was squandered. Depending on who is talking, either Jones or the Australian selectors were at fault, but 52 Tests, 3,631 runs, 11 centuries and an average of 46.55 do not speak of an obvious hard luck story. He arrived on the Test scene to replace batting icons, and as sad as it was, all-time greats replaced him too.
It barely needs stating at this point, but his definitive Test innings occurred in the feverish tied Test at Madras in 1986, when Jones batted through nausea, leg cramps, vomiting and well-timed insults from his captain when it seemed too tough to go on. The numbers are still the subject of wonder: 50-degree heat, 503 minutes, 330 deliveries, eight kilograms lost, one trip to hospital. The 210 runs acquired, a mythic glow.
Not many remember that Jones was only 25 when his long-form career reached that apotheosis; it was his first Test century.
Fewer still recall that two days later, Jones made 48 in a washed-out one-day international. You could attribute that to his bloody-mindedness and ego, but it was equally the result of his endless quest for perfection.
Shortly before departing for that tour, Jones flew to Sydney so he could lunch with Ian Chappell and pose a simple question to the previous generation's swashbuckler: 'How do I get better?'
Only in recent years did Jones share the physical toll that Madras took on him; on hot days, he'd shake like leaf. He said if you could bottle that feeling, it would be banned under the Geneva convention.
Jones transcended cricketing tradition
More than most sports, cricket has a habit of reducing careers and lives to a series of numbers and feats. To some extent, Dean Jones transcended such analyses.
Deeper was his cultural resonance among the last of Australia's pre-internet sports stars. A generation of kids adopted Jones' Kookaburra Bubble bat as their own, slathered their bottom lips in zinc, took guard with Jones's exaggerated spread of the legs, then charged down the wicket with abandon. Never taking a backward step, Jones made them believe the ball was always there to be hit.
His death comes as an almighty jolt, the premature end of an innings that brought un-cynical joy. It makes you think of the way he used to walk back to the pavilion; only Jones could do it with such theatre.
To this day, you still see park-grade batsmen spit out their gum and slap it like a forehand with the face of their bats. It is mimicry of Dean Jones, decades on from his last professional game. They didn't just love him, they wanted to be him.
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2020-09-24 18:03:00Z
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