Will Pucovski had all the time in the world ... until he didn’t

Somehow, time seemed to be on Will Pucovski’s side throughout. Until, sadly, it wasn’t.

There was the extra time he always looked to have while batting. It’d feel like he possessed a cheat code to pause proceedings while facing a delivery and then decide to manoeuvre it in whichever direction he so chose.

“It always looked like the ball was coming 5km slower at him as compared to the others,” one of his junior coaches told me once. All while never taking his eye off the ball, and with the flourish and panache of an artist you simply couldn’t keep your eyes from.

There is no surprise then that the national selectors and Australian cricket always seemed to have time for him. Firstly, to make his long-awaited Test debut. Then to return to the fold. Even till the very end, where they remained hopeful that the 27-year-old would be able to overcome all his challenges and have the world-beating Test career he was seemingly destined to enjoy from the time he was earmarked as a prodigy in his teens.

If anything, at times it felt like Australian cricket was waiting on Pucovski and prepared to wait for however long it took for him to get himself fully right to take his rightful place in the Test team.

Will Pucovski was both a stylist and an accumulator of runs Picture: Getty Images

Despite the numerous breaks in his career, either through concussion or his battles with mental health. Despite the many unfortunate false alarms about Pucovski turning the corner for good.

Time has run out. Earlier this week, the end was made official. There were to be no more comebacks. No more promising signs of a potential return.

All we were left to savour was a Test debut knock of 62 at the SCG against the likes of Jasprit Bumrah and R Ashwin, where he showed enough glimpses of why he was always touted to be a batting superstar. And a Test number (460) that will remain tattooed forever on his ankle.

The “what could have been” narrative is an indelible part of the sporting world. Talents who burst onto the scene but never quite live up to their early hype. Or those who suffer one major injury that derails their career.

But Pucovski’s case was and is different. When he had a bat in his hands, he looked a million bucks. It’s just that there were too many blows to the head while he was in the middle that left a lasting mark on not just his cricket but everyday life, as he revealed recently. There was more to life than him trying yet again to fulfil the boundless potential his talent deserved to.

So, what would have a long, fulfilling Pucovski career looked like? I am sticking my neck out here and insisting that we’d have spoken about the Victorian in the same breath as Mark Waugh or Damien Martyn with regards to being an ultimate stylist. A batter so easy on the eye that every innings of his would have made the highlights reel purely on the power of aesthetics. But what Pucovski also had in spades was an insatiable hunger for runs, and an endless desire to keep batting. In the nets, and more so in the middle. That’s what made him such a voracious accumulator of big scores, right from his junior years, where he’d started drawing comparisons with Ricky Ponting. He’d even managed to score himself a deal with Kookaburra before turning 19, the youngest to do so. There was the maiden Sheffield Shield double ton when barely 20 that propelled him into the national spotlight, alongside his curly mop of hair that added to the eye-catching nature of his cricket. His best run possibly came at the start of the 2020-21 Shield season where he at one stage had piled on 438 runs without being dismissed, including 255 not out in a record-breaking opening stand with Marcus Harris. A run that was thwarted once more with a scary blow to his head during a warm-up game to the Border Gavaskar Trophy.

Will Pucovski acknowledges the croiwd’s applause after making a half-century in his only Test appearance Picture: Getty Images

There was more to Pucovski, though, apart from his skills with the bat. He came across as a born leader. His teammates rallied around him. He was able to get the best out of them. And he would have been primed to take over as Test captain for Australia at some stage, if his career had gone the way it was expected to.

One of Pucovski’s junior coaches once described him as a “senior player in a kid’s body”. This was when he was all of 14 at Caulfield. And that inherent maturity came through every time the young man spoke about his cricket. More so when he gave insights into the travails of constantly having to restart his career after the latest break.

“What it looked like from the outside didn’t quite match up to what was going on inside,” he’d said once.

When asked on a podcast in 2019 whether he thought he could ever be completely “cured”, the youngster had responded with the kind of pragmatism that those around him have come to expect. “I don’t know if there is such a thing as a cure. I don’t see myself as sick or ill … just going through something that a lot of people go through.”

Pucovski’s already stood out in the commentary box every time he got a chance. And he sounds very excited about the coaching role he’s about to embark on next summer.

He’s remained pragmatic and mature about his relationship with cricket throughout, even talking about it on the eve of his Test debut.

“It’s one of those things with your head you don’t want to risk it because you’ve got a long life after cricket and a long life after sport, you want to be fit and healthy for.”