Under grim skies, celebrated a hundred that would define his career. He waited patiently for the moment, for the right ball and time, in the penultimate over of the game, after just a run in his last seven balls. Then Josh Hazlewood veered onto his legs and he flicked the ball to the fence. The celebrations were quiet, in sync with his mild-mannered nature.
This was the day he had dreamt all his life. To score one of the most significant knocks for his country. The fulfilment of a promise. The pinnacle of a schizophrenic career.
There were signs from the start. Just the sixth ball he faced on the sun-lit day at Lord’s, Markram jinked to his back foot, rose with the climbing ball, on tip-toes, conquered the bounce and coaxed the ball from Hazlewood wide of the cover fielder. The audience, among them the Australian fielders, stood in awe, hands to their mouth. It was one of the several strokes Markram authored that both delighted and bemused the beholder. A batsman with such oeuvre of dazzling strokes, gift of timing and touch, ethics and attitude his coaches would swear, have not quite transformed into a batting mainstay.
From the time he captained the U-19 side to glory in 2014, he was touted to the scale heights, his captaincy compared to Graeme Smith, his stroke-play to and the languidness to Daryll Cullinan. Yet, he only frustrated his faithfuls. The start was bright, 97 on debut, hundreds in his fourth and fifth outings. Yet, after 46 Tests, several false starts and dawns, an average that plummeted to early 30s, he remains a riddle. He is bestowed with every element required to held batting charts, yet he fails to convert the gifts to concrete numbers. A middling average of 35.92 and seven hundreds deceives the talent he possesses. He has seldom looked out of touch, but often found him out of runs, especially in Tests.
He has flaws, like most batsmen, but not fatal enough to stall his career, those that could be ironed out. Like the tendency to play from the crease, around the front pad, an impulse to ride the bounce even on dual-bounced surface and a streak of flashiness that has contrived several of his dismissals. Sometimes, he responded with over-cautiousness, sometimes with manufactured aggression. The balance proved horribly elusive. Then after a point, the audience grew resigned to Markram’s erratic traits and the hype around him steadily ebbed. Thrusting captaincy at 23 hindered the organic progression of his career.
The lessened expectations liberated him. It breathed a fresh breath of air into his career. He completely eschewed social media, stopped reading newspapers and focussed on “just being myself.” He revived his white-ball career, even though he could not decode the consistency code in Test cricket. He once resignedly said: “I stopped worrying about my numbers, whether I got a hundred or not. My only concern was whether I contributed to my team’s cause.”
The change of perception revitalised his career. It reached its pinnacle in the most important match of his country in Tests. He batted without botherations and inhibitions, with a composed resolve to atone for the years he had underwhelmed. He never shrunk into his shell, defended resolutely, played his percentage strokes and punished every punishable ball. All he needs is a bit of width on a shortish length, whereupon he would punch or cut on the back foot, like his first boundary.
More delicious strokes flowed from his bat; he has knack of making every stroke look imperious, accentuated by the height and square shoulders. He is difficult batsman to contain because his canvas is vast. He drove the over-pitched deliveries, his bat making a withering arc, anywhere from mid-off to backward point, depending on the line of the ball. He was aggressive, but seldom self-destructive. He would bat long passages without any boundaries (19 balls at one stage), but he kept the scorecard ticking along with tip-and-run singles.
Prone to losing concentration in the past, he focussed relentlessly. Australia threw everything at him, fed him tempters, suffocated him with in-out fields and wide of the off-stump lines. But he did not blink, and kept his biggest enemy at bay, which was himself. He left adroitly, defended resolutely and asserted himself on Nathan Lyon. The turn was slow, but the line from around the stumps was awkward and variable bounce was kicking in. One ball spat from outside the off-stump and spun past his leg, but he promptly wiped the ball from his memory. When Lyon just pulled his length back, he regally punched him through the covers.
The most gorgeous stroke was reserved for Mitchell Starc. He flung a short-of-good-length ball outside the off-stump. He had stationed two fielders at deep third man and sweeper cover. He bisected them both by merely opening the face of the bat. That was perhaps the moment Australia realised that Markram was unstoppable. He was playing the innings of his life-time, that this was his redemption song, the fulfilment of a promise that was long overdue.
