NO BRAVER INNINGS HAS BEEN PLAYED
++ Aussie great dies aged 59 ++ His epic 200 in Chennai cauldron is immortalised ++
IT WAS in 42-degree heat at Chennai in 1986 that Dean Jones — who has died of a heart attack aged just 59 — played perhaps the bravest Test innings by an Australian.
Jones, winning only his third cap, had made an epic 210 in eight hours 23 minutes, lost 8kg, vomited more than a dozen times and peed in his whites. He was rushed to hospital, where he was placed on a saline drip — and later said he could not remember anything after reaching 120.
These days, there would have been an inquiry into an experience that some claimed left him traumatised. Back then, he was propped up by team-mates in an ice bath during intervals, and told by captain Allan Border that he would send out a fellow Queenslander if Jones — born in the Melbourne suburb of Coburg — wasn’t tough enough to carry on.
Steve Waugh, his tour room-mate, remembered Jones looking ‘gaunt and pale in the face’. Waugh added: ‘He had a vacant expression that suggested he was in serious trouble. He had lost control of his bodily functions and was slumped in his chair saturated in urine, shaking uncontrollably, virtually incoherent.’
Jones’s character was never in doubt after that — though he made sure he stuck to just water on future tours of Asia.
Over a decade, he forged a career as a high- class Test batsman capable of averaging 46, and a one-day pioneer who hared between the wickets like a maniac and marshalled run- chases like a genius. In ODIs Australia won batting second, Jones averaged 65 — and was often not out. He would have been a natural in Twenty20.
The vibrancy of his strokeplay made his death yesterday in Mumbai, where Jones (below) was commentating on the IPL for Star Network, all the more shocking. Reports suggested Brett Lee, the Australia fast bowler turned pundit, tried to revive him.
Former Australia captain Michael Clarke tweeted: ‘Speechless. Devastated. RIP great man.’ Ricky Ponting said he was ‘ heartbroken’. Justin Langer, Australia’s coach, said: ‘What a great player and a great bloke.’ Tributes continued all day, from all corners of the cricketing world.
Jones was a bridge between two eras, making his Test debut against the mighty West Indians in March 1984 as Australia tried to come to terms with some big retirements, and playing his last Test in Sri Lanka in September 1992, just as Shane Warne was emerging on the scene. His humour wasn’t always subtle. When Warne, who had struggled in his first couple of games, started taking wickets to pinch a Test in Colombo, Jones chuckled: ‘Well done, mate. Your average is 230 now.’ After the next wicket: ‘Mate, it’s come down to 150 now.’ In 1996, he captained Derbyshire to second in the County Championship, their best finish for 60 years, only to walk away from the club halfway through the following season after falling out with senior team-mates.
A decade later, now behind the mic, Jones referred to the bearded Muslim batsman Hashim Amla as a ‘terrorist’, unaware the broadcast was still live back in South Africa. His deal with Ten Sports was terminated.
He later went into coaching, helping Islamabad United win the inaugural Pakistan Super League in 2016.
But it is as an audacious batsman and electric fielder that he will be best remembered. When Phil Tufnell bowled his first delivery in Tests at Melbourne in 1990, he recalls Jones running at him ‘like an axe murderer’. The result: near-decapitation for the England spinner, and four runs.
He played in two victorious Ashes series, averaging 70 during Australia’s 4-0 win in England in 1989 — a performance that made him one of
Wisden’s Cricketers of the Year. Even shortly before he was ditched by the Test selectors — prematurely, he felt — he was good enough to make an unbeaten century against Sri Lanka in Colombo.
Yet for all Jones’s flair and innovation, he was also single-minded in his pursuit of success.
It’s why he once sought the advice of Geoff Boycott, his polar stylistic opposite. Boycott’s message was simple: ‘ Play straight and trust yourself.’
To the delight of millions of Australians, and many others, Jones needed little encouragement to do either.