Damien Fleming – A promise left unfulfilled by destiny

It is the semifinals of the 1996 World Cup at Mohali. West Indies need 10 runs off the last over. It is Damien Fleming with the ball. Richie Richardson, the West Indian captain is batting on 45. He smashes the first ball for a boundary. The equation now reads 6 required off 5 balls. Fleming keeps his cool, prevents the big shot. The West Indies decide to commit hara-kiri. Ambrose is run out, his captain making the error in judgement by trying to exchange the strike. Walsh tries to heave the next ball and loses his stumps. Australia snatch victory from the jaws of certain defeat.

Fast forward three years to the 1999 World Cup in England. Australia is playing South Africa in the semifinals at Edgbaston. It is that man, Damien Fleming again to bowl the last over. Steve Waugh, the ice man of cricket, seems to prefer Fleming for such moments; Fleming, the one with the beautiful round arm action and a French beard. It is Klusener to face. Klusener smashes the first two balls for boundaries. The third is a dot. The fourth goes straight to the fielder down the wicket. At a point where the bowler should have been tensed with the match all but gone, it is the batsmen who have a brain-fade, yes, yet again!

Those two overs might be the high points of a career that could have panned out somehow differently in a different era, in a different age where teams didn’t have names like McGrath, Gillespie and later Lee in their starting XI. There are times when destiny plays the ultimate bluff. You have all the cards. You have everything one needs to win. You are the complete package. But it just doesn’t happen. No one will ever tell you why. For a bowler with so much talent including a natural ability to swing the ball and an unnaturally strong temperament in crunch moments, Fleming played all of 20 Test matches for Australia to go with his 88 ODI appearances. The 1999 World Cup win that started the Australian era of complete dominance and decimation of opponents in Tests and ODIs, is a worthy consolation for a guy who was the joker of the dressing room. It comes as no wonder that he is one of the more popular commentators and motivational speakers in Australia going round. It is due to an exceptionally good sense of humour that Fleming didn’t end up as a cynical man, bitter for the opportunities that didn’t come his way, thanks to the unbelievable competition that existed during the decade when he was at his peak.

Yet, the start wasn’t so bad after all. The man, who shares his birthday with Sachin Tendulkar and believes, sharing anything with Sachin as far as cricket is concerned, is a positive sign, broke on to the scene with a bang. Like Sachin, he debuted against Pakistan, and remains the only Australian bowler to claim a hat-trick on debut. It came at Rawalpindi in 1994, where he finished the match with figures of 7-161. That he missed the next match due to an injury is more or less a precursor to what was coming. Indian cricket lovers will remember Fleming as the bowler who dismissed Sachin in the first of his two sandstorm innings, against Australia at Sharjah, the bowler who was seemingly fired up and had loads of things to say to Sachin after he missed a hook and edged it to the wicket-keeper. Interestingly, the two birthday players had a showdown in the finals and the rest was history. Booed by a large section of the crowd when the birthday message came up on the screen, Fleming has not let his cricketing bitterness to affect his sly wit and sense of humour, skills that have led him to be picked as the best commentator in a survey of Australian Cricketers’ Association, pipping Warne to the post. Fleming doesn’t hold anything against his Victorian teammate and 1999 World Cup superstar, Warne, the man who dropped a sitter at slips to deny him a second hat-trick at Adelaide in 1999 where he took a 5-for against India.

Having a team whose present senior-most fast bowler has an average in the high 30s after having played more than 50 Test matches, Indians will always look wistfully and ruefully at Fleming’s career statistics. A high and smooth action, cut short as compromise against injuries, allowed Fleming to swing the ball and be recognised as the swing specialist, incisive and brisk at most times. In 20 matches, he averages an extremely impressive 25.89 with 75 wickets. He has 134 wickets at an average and economy of 25.38 and 4.41 respectively in ODIs. A gritty player, Fleming impressively averages 19 with the bat in Tests. A veteran of many TV shows, Damien Fleming has also been the head coach at the prestigious Australian Cricket Academy.

Fleming also offers expert coaching tips and tricks to bowlers through Bowlologist, a venture that has him at the core, offering assistance to fast bowlers around the world when it comes to physical training, technical training and skill-level training. Interestingly, the whole concept was designed to enhance the emotional and mental capabilities of the bowler along with the physical endurance and skill-level. When it came to mental balance and emotional control, there couldn’t have been someone better than Damien Fleming, a rare combination of wonderful entertaining humour and an ice-cool temperament in a crisis. We hope the former Australian fast-bowler who turns 44 today, watches destiny make up for its deception, in more ways than one. Even if it doesn’t, here is a man who isn’t likely to lose his smile or his sleep.