42 times. That’s how many name-drops Simon Harmer has in my coverage of South Africa’s series win over Australia.
For most of the series, he wasn’t much of a story, but I couldn’t stop writing about him anyway. This is partly because I have been watching him for ages but never actually covered him. Like a young fast bowler turning up at the WACA for the first time, I got a bit excited.
But incredibly, my second-most mentioned Australian player was Nathan Lyon.
Australia just went up against South Africa, and the two players I couldn’t stop mentioning were offspinners, or what Gideon Haigh once called “cricket’s rubbish skill”. It was a shootout at the OK Corral, and I was writing about the dentist and the bank manager.
Some of this is about how South African pitches have evolved - climate change and all that. It was also about the batting: these two stood out in the middle longer than they usually would. Harmer’s catching and Lyon’s dropping also played a part.
But no matter how you look at it, my mind is in the footmarks even before the cricket is.
This series was different: usually I write single narrative pieces. But this time I took all my notes and published them.
My notes don’t accurately reflect how others view the game, which, if you’ve read anything from me, is as obvious as the plot holes in Jurassic Park 2 (seriously, how did the T. rex kill the crew of the ship, Spielberg?). I am pretty sure most will have the captains as the two most-mentioned players. Even selector George Bailey and coach Shukri Conrad barely get brought up by me; others have them as main characters on loop.
There are also mitigating factors: I did it all remotely, and I missed two days. On day five of the first Test, I was at a theme park riding upside down, and day three of the final match was missed in a less exciting way.
Matt Renshaw predictably got a lot of my coverage. But I was obsessed with him beforehand; had I written on the ODIs, we could have nailed 50 mentions. But even I was surprised at how little Scott Boland and Marnus Labuschagne were mentioned. Even considering Boland’s one Test, I usually deconstruct cricket’s simplest man more. On Marnus, I feel like I am years deep into the same conversation. I’m overdue a feature on him. (I will be back in a moment; I am now planning a longread.)
Peter Handscomb got seven mentions, and wasn’t in the squad. This feels like an unfortunate slight on Kurtis Patterson, who is owed a few stray name-drops.
Wiaan Mulder got 22 references, partly because his bowling is of the moment. It’s on trend. The kids are talking about it. It probably Snapchat’s cool TikToks. What I am surprised by is that I kind of ghosted David Bedingham. Now, part of this might be that I think his surname should have an extra d in it. But since he started making all of Durham’s runs, I’ve been a huge fan, and here he didn’t even get into double-figure mentions. Yet in the games, he made it into double figures a lot, but couldn’t go further.
The themes I covered a lot were South Africa and the short ball, both teams’ selection choices (but mostly Australia’s), clearly the spinners, teams beating themselves, illness and injury, with quite a bit on the often passive captaincy on show.
South Africa’s batting remains a fascination, whereas I kind of gave up on Australia’s, which is morbidly consistent, with the odd entertaining collapse.
There is a part of my brain where there are 3,500 words on the Beau Webster era, but maybe that is where they should stay.
(Though, now that I think about it, “The Ballad of Beau” is a good title for a piece.)
Let us finally be honest: Marco Jansen is clearly the player I talked about the most. My cats are sick of hearing about him. He had his own feature separate to this. A lot of my anticipation of this series (and the England tour I’m heading out for) was to cover him.
The Magic Octopus: Marco Jansen
I have compared Marco Jansen to a giant praying mantis. He is all limbs; it feels as if every part of him is too long. A woollen jumper that sags when wet. His wingspan is so enormous that he could itch his ankle without bending over. He doesn’t look like a fast bowler. If anything, he’s more of a skinny small forward in basketball, or - you know - a praying mantis.
Marco Jansen is nearly a monomania for me. At the end of play, at home on my sofa, I was watching each delivery on NV Play. I am writing a PhD based on my Marco master’s degree.
Harmer will probably see what I say about him, and probably has notes for me. Jansen has no idea he’s become a central player in the Kimber Cricketing Universe (KCU, or the Kimberverse).
If you counted every single mention of Jansen out of my mouth, or every time he was pictured in my mind, we’re talking restraining-order levels of coverage.
In the words of Mike Skinner, this series was a “Cult Classic, not bestseller”.