Dean Jones: No one took on the bowling, or life, like Deano

Nobody batted like Deano. Nobody danced down the pitch to take the game on. Nobody was driven with such passion for the sport.

Australian cricketer Dean Jones, who died suddenly in India. He was 59.

There was no one like Deano.

Nobody batted like Deano. Nobody danced down the pitch to take the game on like Deano. Nobody provoked bowlers like Deano. Nobody could talk like Deano. Nobody was driven with such wholehearted, unbridled passion for the game.

He brought entertainment to Test cricket with his dancing feet and flashing bat. He hinted in one-day cricket, with his flair and fielding and his running between the wickets, at what was to follow when they got around to inventing T20. And it really bothered him that he never got a crack at that game.

Dean Jones in his Baggy Green.

He loved T20 and followed it around the world, in recent years coaching and commentating in Pakistan. He was prominent and persistent in his calls for the game to return to that country.

Chairman of Cricket Australia Earl Eddings said he was a hero of his time. He certainly brought an element of show business to Allan Border’s era, but he had more strings to his bow than his dash alone. He was stupid brave, he taunted the biggest, fastest and fiercest bowlers and in India he defied extraordinary physical deprivation in that innings.

What more can be said of his 210 in the famous tied Test in Madras in 1986? An uncharacteristic grind in conditions so oppressive he could not remember its second half, Jones was taken to hospital in a perilous state.

When Jones had told Border he would have to leave the field earlier in the innings, his captain had goaded the proud Victorian by saying if he left he’d bring in somebody tough like a Queenslander to do the job.

Jones batted on, vomiting by the pitch and even lost control of his bladder. Later, Border said he thought he’d killed his star.

Deano wouldn’t have changed a thing. The innings is one of the most celebrated in cricket, it made him loved in India and gifted him one of the great stories of the game. One that will be told long after his tragic death.

Dean Jones on his way to 210 in horrendous conditions in Madras in 1986.

The series, which Australia drew, redefined the contest between the two countries and led to the eventual creation of the Border-Gavaskar trophy.

He played 74 Sheffield Shield matches for Victoria, scoring 20 centuries and averaged 54.

He was raised in cricket by his father Barney who was a legend at the Carlton cricket club. Dean was born in Coburg, but his mother told him he was conceived in Canberra, which he claimed was the reason he had so much to say.

Precocious always, he told a story of being 100no overnight in an under-14s game when his dad took him to Carlton, where the president promised him a bat if he got 200 — which he promptly did.

Father and son played one match together 10 years after his father retired and batted through the day, Barney Jones hitting what his son described as the biggest six ever.

Later Jones challenged the purists with his tendency to aim shots over the boundary in the manner his father had that day.

Last week he rang and in a discussion about the short ball and its effects on batsmen, he passed on some of Barney’s wisdom.

“Dad used to say great batsmen never get bowled and they never get hit in the head,” Jones said from the hotel room in which he later died.

He then went on to talk about the three times he got struck, including one blow from the great Curtly Ambrose, which burst his ear drum, and another from Sussex bowler Tony Pigott, which broke his cheek. Jones continued batting after that blow and hit a six from the next ball he faced.

Dean Jones celebrates a One Day International century against Pakistan at the WACA on January 2, 1987.

Renowned for his hyperbole and exuberance, he said he was loving being back on the road with the cricket after a tough period in Victoria, but complained that he and fellow commentators were restricted to one floor of the hotel and only allowed to exercise once a day.

Worse, Jones said, the alcohol supply the group had brought was running low and they would not be allowed any more for the next two months.

Jones, Scott Styris, Brett Lee, Brian Lara and Graeme Swann were meeting once a night in the business lounge on their floor and having the last of their drinks, he said.

He attacked life like he attacked the cricket ball, his theories, anecdotes and observations coming thick, fast and without filter.

Cate McGregor rang last night to remind me of a time when Greg Matthews had cast aspersions on Jones’s innings in Madras. It was during a rain delay in a one-day match and someone said it was raining so much we would have to build an ark. Jones quipped that would be fine, but they wouldn’t be able to find two Greg Matthews to put on it.

They wouldn’t have been able to find two Dean Joneses either.