Why Travis Head is king of the castle this summer
Travis Head is old-school enough to have played in the 1970s and down-to-earth enough to get a role alongside the Kerrigans. Australian cricket has the unlikeliest new hero.
Cricket Australia once told its players to come out from under their helmets. Show some personality, you dopey buggers. Because the team was strangely unpopular. Boring and robotic. Come out from hiding, they were told. Express yourselves. Be yourselves. Let folks know you’re capable of muttering more than yes, no, wait, howzat, sorry. The next bloke to say he’s taking it one match at a time will be taken out the back of Jolimont Street and shot.
All this came to mind when footage arrived of Travis Head’s homecoming to Adelaide after his World Cup … efforts. I was going to write World Cup heroics but is anything in sport all that heroic? No-one’s rescuing victims of grim wars, nor providing shelter to orphaned babies, nor curing cancer, nor working as a palliative care nurse. There’s gotta be a better and more accurate description than heroism. While Head’s five-star, man-of-the-match, wildly entertaining contribution to the World Cup final was athletic endeavour at its most audacious, in terms of human accomplishment it might lag ever-so slightly behind the deeds of Joan of Arc, William Wallace, Erik the Red and Robert the Bruce. If it isn’t heroism, then what is it? Excellence? Sounds boring but that’ll do.
Anyway, for an ability to hit a small white ball over a boundary rope in an important game of cricket … Head was most excellent. He whooped it up in celebrations in India. Sang the team song, had a beer, kissed the Cup, posted photos of being three sheets to the wind, all that. He seems to have taken Cold Chisel’s ‘Cheap Wine’ in regards to the three-day growth. But it was only when he returned to Adelaide that I gained a sense of who he really is.
His on-field demeanour is straight-down-the-line. Combative and a bit cantankerous. He could have played in the 1970s, all hairy-chested with a gold chain round his neck while sticking it up everyone alongside Marsh, Lillee and the Chappells. Equally he could’ve been written into The Warwick Todd Diaries. I had him pegged as a bit of a Captain Grumpy, which would be no bad thing, for Allan Border was glorious. It all just came as a shock to see and hear the real Head back home … a Head without a helmet or cap on it.
With his missus by his side. With a tiny daughter in his arms. Before he got on Instagram and posted a photo of his family and wrote, “This is the reason for it all.” With two cute love hearts. The big softy.
He’s a hardman of an athlete, old-school, and followed his MVP awards in the World Cup semi-final and final with another MVP for celebrations that went around the clock for so many days the clock gave up and called it a night. Now he was just a bloke in a white T-shirt, with a big beaming smile, and an endearing lisp, waiting for his bags at an airport carousel before he piled everyone in the car and took ‘em home.
The unlikeliest … hero? Unashamedly stoked by recent successes. “It won’t sink in for a long time,” he said of his stellar Indian summer that followed Australia’s World Test Championship triumph and retention of the Ashes. “I said after the game I was looking forward to the ten-or-20-year reunion. This was just a bunch of blokes who were able to achieve some special things in the last 12 months. Obviously the Test Championship, the World Cup final, to be involved in them is quite incredible. I’m just glad to make a contribution.”
It was only recently that Head resembled a middle-order plodder. What was he doing in the Australian XI? He wasn’t especially exciting to watch. He wasn’t making big scores. You’d put the house on him making 30 then slicing one straight to gully. He started hitting his straps, fours, sixes and centuries last season at home but Australian selectors decided to give him a miss anyway, sacking him for the first Test against India in February. “Never, ever drop him again,” Matthew Hayden said after Head, newly motivated to rip in at every opportunity, steered Australia home in the third Test on the subcontinent.
And then he made 163 in the World Test Championship final at The Oval. And then he had a decent Ashes series. And then went berserk in the closing stages of the World Cup. His 137 in the final came from 120 deliveries. Eighty-four of those runs were in boundaries. You thought nothing could match Sam Kerr’s wonder goal at her World Cup for the individual highlight of Australia’s sporting year but just a head’s up … he did it. It was a folkloric knock and when Australia’s Test summer kicks off against Pakistan in Perth on Thursday, he’s become what few thought he could be. The main man. The money man. Must-see TV. The most electrifying and interesting sight in Australia’s top order. I’d go out of my way to watch Kerr play soccer … and I’ll be going out of my way to find an idiot box when he’s at the crease in Perth.
Of the extended World Cup celebrations, giving the red-hot Head a sore one, he said: “I probably threw myself under a bus a little bit by some of the photos I posted throughout the couple of days after. Look, I think you’ve got to celebrate in the right way and I think we did that. There were a few standouts off the field. It’s just a joy of a team to be around. Enjoying each other’s success, enjoying being part of the team.”
Head’s straight out of The Castle. He could play himself in the movie and be Dale Kerrigan’s best mate. Peas in a pod. Dale could tell Head: “Dad reckons fishing is ten per cent brains and 95% muscle. The rest is just good luck.” Head would smile knowingly and say, “Too right, mate.” He’s come out from under his helmet and come of age. You’re doing all right in life when you come across as a bit of a Dale Kerrigan. He’s big-hearted, down-to-earth, hard-working and well-intentioned. Perhaps that’s more than enough to be heroic.
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