Tim Paine takes golf lesson from Bradman and Healy

The spirit of Don Bradman and Ian Healy is being kept alive in quiet corners of multi-storey car parks in the UAE.

Ian Healy catches a golf ball in his inners in 1991

The spirit of Don Bradman and Ian Healy is being kept alive in quiet corners of multi-storey car parks in the United Arab Emirates.

In the first Test in Dubai, Tim Paine produced one of the most impressive performances by an Australian wicketkeeper in decades and now the new captain has given a fascinating insight into the secret behind his flawless glovework.

Test greats like Allan Border still worry about the enormous burden of being both captain and custodian, yet in oppressive conditions against Pakistan, Paine took every half chance and underlined his leadership with the subtle but powerful gesture of imploring teammates to keep a lid on emotions after their great escape.

“A draw is a draw,” said Paine. “And we’re here to win.”

Paine admitted “he tried too hard” on his failed first assignment as national captain/keeper in England earlier this year, where Australia were whitewashed in one-dayers, and that struggle has likely cost him his ODI career.

So now Paine has gone back to what he’s always done on the back-lots and carparks of Hobart: throwing a golf ball up against a wall and catching for hours on end.

Bradman famously did a similar trick, hitting a golf ball off a water tank with a stump. Healy often retreated alone with inners on, as Paine does now, to throw and catch a golf ball.

Paine says the confidence he takes from the solitude and rhythm of that constant ping on concrete will sustain him through one of the toughest assignments ever taken on in Test cricket.

“I watched Ian Healy years ago doing it so I do that. I can do it standing up, I can do it standing back,” he said. “The beauty of it is I can catch 10 times as many balls as if I had someone hitting me balls.

“A lot of the time at Bellerive I just go up the back of the grandstand by myself for an hour or two just banging the golf ball up against the wall.

“It’s pretty boring but in some weird way I really enjoy it. I find it relaxes me and allows me to go into a Test knowing I’m in a good place. (Today) I’ll just find a carpark or something like that.”

Paine’s demeanour and skill level in Dubai in all facets of the game was remarkable. But he had to learn the hard way.

“One thing I learned (from England this year) was I probably trained too hard and tried too hard,” he said. “I was getting into games quite mentally worn out. I was using quite a lot of energy even when I wasn’t at the cricket. So it’s just being able to relax a little bit more.”

Paine confirmed the reasoning behind telling excited Australian teammates to cool it after he secured the great save in Dubai was a documentary he watched where former England captain Michael Vaughan said he knew he had Australia beaten in the 2005 Ashes when they celebrated a draw.

“I just saw a little bit of it (the celebrations) spilling out the door,” Paine said. “Vaughan said after one of those Tests that he felt as an opposition captain that they had them when he saw them celebrating a draw. I’ve seen that myself before. We were clearly pretty excited by what we’d been able to achieve because it doesn’t happen too much, but you’ve got to keep a bit of perspective.”

Meanwhile, former Test selector Mark Waugh believes Aaron Finch can be the powder keg at the top of the order Michael Slater was for Australia two decades ago.

Slater’s debonair strokeplay was an energising force for Australia when he burst onto the scene in the 1993 Ashes tour after a dour 1980s characterised by hard toil.

The aggressiveness of Slater was a key factor in helping Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath establish themselves on the back of the spring-loaded starts given to them by the stroke-playing opener.

Many of Australia’s current generation, and possibly even 31-year-old Finch himself, rank Slater as one of their biggest influences.

Waugh witnessed the power of Slater first-hand and from the crisis born out of David Warner’s ban, he believes Finch could become Australia’s new action hero.

Finch’s mandate is to fill the shoes of Warner, one of the most destructive openers in Test history.

“He’s the sort of player who could crack the game open at the top, a bit like Michael Slater,” Waugh said.

“I think that’s his natural game. He’s an attacking batsman. Technically he’s tightened up his game up a bit in the past 12 months or so.

“He’s batting with a lot of confidence. That’s been at white ball level but he’s shown he can transform to red ball as well.

“After all, it’s a cricket ball so if you’re playing well in one format it can transfer across. I think his natural game is he could really get the team off to a bit of a flyer. But he’s got to find the right balance between attacking and in Test cricket, giving the new ball some respect – looking at the conditions and seeing it swing. I see his attacking game in a Michael Slater mould.”

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