Allrounder Green shoots towards the promised land

Cameron Green and Australian cricket is tingling with expectation over his potential.

Cameron Green celebrates taking the wicket of Chris Woakes on the final day of the first Test. Picture: AFP.

Amid all the focus on captains, Cummins and goins, failure and success, selection and rejection, Head and tails, there was a detail which slipped between the cracks.

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

Okay, 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.

The physically impressive all-rounder is going to be one hell of a cricketer. He is the promised land. The all-rounder England always seem to have and Australia could not quite cultivate.

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 wicket-taking 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. “It was absolutely remarkable. I’m proper excited about his skillset.

“His belief will keep growing day by day, training session by training session and Test by Test, and he’s going to be an unbelievable asset for Australian cricket for a long time, hopefully.”

Green is the baby of the team, the Jethro Clampett of the family. Bam Bam maybe. At 200cm he towers over most of his more senior teammates but he is years younger than all of them. England’s James Anderson is old enough to be his father.

Green burst on the scene as a raw boned bowler who plucked five-wicket hauls with nonchalance in first class cricket. His speed and bounce proved too much for most Sheffield Shield opponents.

He took 5-24 on debut for Western Australia against Tasmania and while he didn’t pick up the wicket of the captain turned chief selector George Bailey, the Tigers skipper could not have helped but notice the kid.

WA coach Justin Langer was certainly impressed by the 17-year-old who he would later welcome into the Australian dressing room.

“That‘s as good a spell as I’ve ever seen from someone in their debut game,” Langer said.

“His first innings was quite extraordinary really, to bowl fast bouncing outswingers at 17-year-old, that was the highlight.”

Sidelined by a stress fracture the following season, Green reminded Bailey of how good he was by going one better and taking 6-30 in the first innings of that Shield clash two years after they first met.

Early impressions are important, but by the time Green came onto 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 on this stuff. Marnus Labuschagne, Phillip Hughes, David Warner and Steve Smith were all batters he rated before even their respective state set ups realised what they had.

It seems cruel to ladle expectation onto one so young, but former Test star and academy bowling coach Ryan Harris chimed in around Christmas the following season to suggest Green was Australia’s answer to Andrew Flintoff.

Now we’re talking.

Unable to bowl Green had been moved up the order. Over the next two seasons of Sheffield Shield cricket he peeled off seven centuries at an average in the mid 60s.

The bowling is slowly finding its groove after a long lay off and a change of action. Green’s delight at getting his first Test wicket at Brisbane was obvious.

“I know he was on bowling restrictions last summer but I think he‘s a bit underused,” Ricky Ponting told Cricket Australia’s web site. ”Anytime he had the ball in his hand in Brisbane, something was happening.

“Even with the old ball he got some swing. He bowls with the newer ball for WA, he‘s a noted swing bowler and he (regularly) gets the opportunity with a newer ball (in the Sheffield Shield).

“Going somewhere like Adelaide where there might be some movement, I‘d give him a bit more of a crack as well.

“You look at him now and you think you can easily lock him in for 15 (overs) an innings.

“Speaking to JL, (Australia coach Justin Langer) he talks about ’wait until he fully grows into his body and his body lets him bowl the way he can bowl’ … he looks like a good prospect to me.”