All-round Green shoots blossom

AMID all the focus on captains, Cummins and goings, failure and success, selection and rejection, Head and tails, there was a detail that slipped between the cracks.

It’s all coming together for Cameron Green and Australian cricket is tingling with expectation over his potential.

OK, his effort at the crease was only the second most spectacular golden duck of the Brisbane Test and his three wickets not a lot to write home about, but this bean has beanstalk written all over it. You’d trade your cow for this kid.

Last summer, he looked like he was still growing into spaces reserved for his adolescent body, this year he’s bursting out of it. That was a big year in the gym and, given he is 22, you wonder where it will end.

His cricket is catching up to his body too. Hints of his batting prowess were on display in his first Test summer and this year it is his bowling that’s beginning to bloom.

Pat Cummins is licking his lips. “He’s a huge asset for us – still firmly in our top six batters – but to have someone who can give us genuine wickettaking overs, it’s great,” the captain said after the game at the Gabba.

Veteran Nathan Lyon was equally impressed.

“We were all saying how remarkable his skillset is,” the spinner revealed.

Early impressions are important but, by the time Green came on to the radar for selection in the first Test against India in 2020, he was described by Greg Chappell as the best batting talent he’d seen since Ricky Ponting.

Chappell has a good success rate. Marnus Labuschagne, Phillip Hughes, David Warner and Steve Smith were all batters he rated before even their states realised what they had.

It seems cruel to ladle expectation on to one so young, but former Test star and academy bowling coach Ryan Harris chimed in the following season, suggesting Green was Australia’s answer to Andrew Flintoff. Now we’re talking.