Don’t do it Ash: Feeling cheated by Barty departure

Retiring tennis star Ash Barty has left sports fans feeling just a little cheated

By the time US tennis legend Serena Williams turned 25 — the age at which Ash Barty has decided to call it a day — in September 2006, she had only won seven grand slam titles. That’s a pretty good tally, but nothing like the 23 she went on to collect.

Rafael Nadal, who won a record 21st grand slam at the Australian Open this year, only had 10 under his belt when he celebrated his 25th birthday in June 2011.

What about Roger Federer, who shares a matchless slice backhand with Barty? He’s won 20 grand slams but only nine of them came before he turned 25 the same year as Williams.

Novak Djokovic also has 20, but only six of them were sitting on the shelf in his pool room in time for his 25th birthday.

All of them realised they had a great deal more to give and the best was yet to come. In their mid-20s they were just coming into their prime and had a great deal more to give.

Which has AWAAT thinking, how many more has Barty left on the court? And amid all the global applause for a job well done and Barty’s brave decision to go out on top, we just feel a bit cheated.

Australian tennis has invested a lot in Barty, but more importantly, Australian sports fans had a lot tied up in her. We should have been looking forward to a whole lot more from her.

Not just more grand slam titles — more Australian Open victories to make up for the 44-year drought she broke in January. But more entertainment, more excitement, more of the lift she gave us in the middle of the pandemic last year when she won Wimbledon. More inspiration for young players.

We felt a bit cheated when Shane Gould quit swimming at the age of 16 after collecting three gold medals, a silver and a bronze at the Munich Olympics. We felt cheated when Mark Ella, perhaps the greatest rugby five-eighth to play the game, retired at age 25 after spearheading the Wallabies on the 1984 grand slam tour of Britain and Ireland. Now we feel a bit cheated that, potentially, Australia’s greatest ever female tennis player is walking away from the game with unfinished business.

We can only hope that after a few months at home, Barty gets the fire back in her belly and decides to return to the tour.

Or maybe she will decide to have a crack at golf. After all, she plays off a handicap of three at Brisbane’s Brookwater Club, where she won the 2020 club championship without really focusing on the sport.

Either way, at her age she has plenty of time on her side.

Mac-nificent Cummins

Australian captain Pat Cummins ran riot against Pakistan late on Thursday, combining with pace partner Mitchell Starc to obliterate the home side’s batting in a sensational hour of fast bowling.

Stumps were cartwheeling all over the place as the two Aussie spearheads took seven wickets for just 20 runs.

However, Cummins achieved more than just the impressive figures of 5-56. He became only the fourth Australian paceman to take a five-wicket haul in Pakistan, the first one to do it outside of Karachi and the only one who isn’t a Mac.

“Slasher” Ken Mackay took 6-42 at Karachi in 1959 and West Australian paceman Graham McKenzie took a five-for there in 1964. Glenn McGrath did the same in 1998, the last time Australia played a Test series in Pakistan.

Yank bowled over

The cricket fans of Lahore, deprived of Test matches since a terror attack in 2009, were delighted to have the Australians at the National Stadium this week. Perhaps among the most excited was an American who is only a recent ­arrival in the city.

US Consul General William Makaneole is a cricket tragic who fancies himself as a legspinner. And his skills have come on since Australia’s Michael Kasprowicz, in Pakistan as a commentator, gave him a masterclass during a break in play. It may or may not have involved a piece of fruit.

Makaneole went viral a little while ago with his celebrations at a Pakistan Super League match.

Video of Makaneole doing push-ups to salute a six hit by ­Lahore Qalandars batsman Fak­har Zaman garnered more than 200,000 views on Twitter. Apparently Makaneole had agreed to do push-ups every time a six was hit.

The diplomat’s passion for the game has no doubt given US-Pakistan relations a bit of a boost. They have certainly come on since 1959, when Dwight D Eisenhower became the only US President to watch a Test live in Pakistan. Ike sat through a day in Karachi when Pakistan scored just 104 runs for the loss of five wickets.

Lone Berlin survivor

And then there was one … the death this week of Canadian swimmer Joan McLagan leaves only one surviving Olympian from the notorious 1936 Berlin Olympics.

McLagan, who passed away at the impressive age of 99 in Chilliwack, British Columbia, competed in Berlin as a 13-year-old, finishing last in her heat of the 200m ­breaststroke. Swimming in the same event was American Iris Cummings, who at 101 is now the only living athlete who competed at the Berlin Olympics.

Cummings trained as a pilot after the Games and saw distinguished service with the US Women’s Air Force Service Pilots in World War II. Later she had a long career as a flight instructor.

McLagan carried on swimming for several years after Berlin, setting a world record for the women’s 50-yard breaststroke and winning a bronze medal in the 220-yard breaststroke at the 1938 British Empires Games in Sydney. She also finished fourth in the 3x110-yard medley relay in Sydney — this was before butterfly was considered a distinct stroke.

Good on McLagan and Cummings, both of them far better humans than the little bloke with the toothbrush moustache who tried to make the Berlin Games all about him and his twisted ideology — only to be shown up rather badly by African-American sprinter and long-jumper Jesse Owens and his four gold medals.

Boxing? Yeah, right

And finally ... a couple of old blokes had a brief and unedifying punch-up on Wednesday night. It wasn’t in the street outside a pub after one too many cold ones, but it might as well have been.

A bloke in his late 30s, who was once a pretty good rugby and rugby league player, cleaned up a fella in his mid-40s who played Australian football back in the day.

If you paid money to watch it, you got to see a scrappy brawl that was over in less than two minutes. The performance from Screaming Jets frontman Dave Gleeson prior to the fight lasted longer.

I’m not sure what word you would use to describe it, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t sport.

[e-mail] @walmason