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Middle class

Source: The Times Online - May 22, 2005

England and Australia both rely on the ample experience of their middle-order enforcers to keep them out of trouble On the face of it, Damien Martyn and Graham Thorpe do not have much in common. Their batting styles are hardly similar. Technically, both are highly accomplished, but whereas Thorpe's match-turning innings sweat grit, Martyn's are adorned with effortless strokes that send the ball gliding across the turf.

If they were hired assassins, Martyn would push a knife firmly between the shoulder-blades, before lowering you gently to the ground; Thorpe would bludgeon you to death without any nonsense.

But an outline of their careers suggests they may not be so dissimilar. Both were highly rated youngsters whose careers didn't quite take off as planned after early displays of promise and self-belief. Thorpe first played Test cricket at 23, scoring a century in the second innings of his debut, against Australia at Trent Bridge in 1993. Martyn began at 21 and in his second game outshone some of his seniors by keeping West Indies at bay on a treacherous pitch in Melbourne.

But after seven Tests, Martyn was cast into the wilderness for six years. The assumption was that he had been made to pay for a reckless dismissal that cost Australia a match against South Africa in Sydney. But he had also gained a not undeserved reputation as an angry young man who upset the management with his wayward off-field behaviour.

Six years is a long time to be an outcast and Martyn became so low he toyed with quitting the game altogether. But he was talked out of it by Wayne Clark, then the Western Australia coach, and eventually rediscovered his touch. When he was recalled for a tour of New Zealand early in 2000, as stand-in for the injured Ricky Ponting, his mother had to search in the attic for his baggy green cap.

Thorpe was also jettisoned in 1994, but his exile was shorter. He was back within months, although it took him years to show that he knew how to convert punchy fifties into well thought-out hundreds. He also had character defects, as far as the management was concerned, in his willingness to give vent to dressing-room grievances over “working conditions”. Another angry young man.

Thorpe, too, became disenchanted. The break-up of his marriage, which could be attributed at least in part to his absences from home through playing commitments, promp-ted him to walk away from cricket three years ago and write himself out of England's plans. Just as there were those who mourned Martyn's absence, Thorpe's admirers were aghast at the thought that he might never be seen on the international stage again. But in the past couple of years both men have walked in paradise garden, accepted as exceptional players finally fulfilling their manifest talents. Since 2003, Thorpe has scored five Test centuries and Martyn seven.

A hundred by either player is taken as virtually a safeguard against defeat. They are the middle-order enforcers, skilled at establishing working relations with the upper or lower-order batting.

Martyn doesn't often have to dig Australia out of holes, but he can do it, as he showed during Australia's triumphs in Sri Lanka and India last year with vital second-innings centuries in Galle, Kandy and Madras. More typically, he has walked to the wicket with the score reading about 200 for two and proceeded to dispatch bowlers to all parts — in the most elegant of ways, of course. Of Martyn's 12 centuries, only one has come in defeat — and as that was a game, at Leeds in 2001, in which Australia were prompted by rain to set England an inviting target, that hardly counts.

Probably because England's batting machine isn't as awesome as Australia's, Thorpe's best innings have been forged out of crises. There is nothing like 50 for three to get his competitive juices flowing.

If in character and temperament Martyn, 33, is like Mark Waugh (whose No 4 position he inherited), then Thorpe is close to being Steve Waugh in his relish for rearguard actions. Even Steve cannot fail to have been impressed by the way Thorpe has dragged certain games round for his side — The Oval in 2003 and Barbados, Trent Bridge and Old Trafford last year. The only one of Thorpe's past 14 centuries to be made in defeat was against Pakistan in Manchester in 2001, a game England arguably should not have lost. They surrendered eight wickets after tea on the final day.

Both men like to hit the ball on the up, having been brought up on pitches with bounce. Martyn was born in the northern Australian outpost of Darwin, but after a cyclone hit the town when he was an infant, the family was evacuated to Perth. There he rose swiftly through Australia's cricket youth system, captaining the national under-19s and attending the academy, where he struck up a friendship with another headstrong youngster, Shane Warne. Brought up on the fast, true surfaces at the Waca, he was noticed for the audacity of his strokeplay, not the fallibility of his judgment.

Thorpe, who came up through Surrey's youth system, was two years older by the time he made Test cricket, largely because England cricketers tend to grow up slower. He was still precocious by the standards of his peers, scoring 1,000 runs in his first full season of county cricket and being chosen for his first A tour at the age of 20. His confidence was enhanced by playing on the true pitches of The Oval, although his first championship century came against Malcolm Marshall at Basingstoke.

But whatever the past parallels, there is now a significant difference between the situations of Martyn and Thorpe. Whereas Martyn's place has never been so secure, Thorpe — who concedes that at 35 he is entering the last lap of his career — finds himself the subject of intense speculation that he may not even start the Ashes series, let alone finish it.

Given his record, this is unlikely, but his fitness and form in the early weeks of the season for Surrey have caused concern. He will be less worried about his modest scores than his creaking back. His big-match temperament should provide him with considerable credit in the bank, but were Kevin Pietersen to score heavily in the one-dayers, the pressure to pick him for the Ashes would grow ever greater. While Thorpe's form in South Africa last winter was patchy, it was a deal better than many of his teammates. Only Andrew Strauss and Marcus Trescothick averaged more than his 35.9 and he again played influential roles: but for his unbeaten 118 in Durban, or his 86 in Centurion, England might have lost both games.

Australia will seek to expose Thorpe's potential shortcomings in mobility and endurance with the bat and in the field, just as England sought to prey on Steve Waugh's evident frailty in his last Ashes series. Glenn McGrath and Warne, who has dismissed Thorpe nine times, will provide the main threat, but Thorpe can take heart that in his last Ashes series Waugh overcame his struggles and came good at the last, with a century in the final Test at Sydney. As for Martyn, England suspect short-pitched bowling can discomfort him, as it can any top-class player. Steve Harmison, then a novice, had his successes against Martyn during the previous series, and the plan will be to prevent him from settling.

Along with Matthew Hayden, Thorpe and Martyn go back further in England- Australia matches than anybody else who will feature this summer. All three first appeared in the one-day internationals of May 1993. Although Martyn scored a fine fifty at Lord's, only Thorpe featured in the subsequent Tests. For all their combined tally of 154 Test caps, Martyn and Thorpe have opposed each other only once in an Ashes game, at Lord's four years ago, when Thorpe's involvement in the series was cut short by Brett Lee breaking his hand. The England left-hander will be hoping that, come Lord's on July 21, they will be back to face each other there again.

- SIMON WILDE