Weapon of choiceJake Niall
The Age
December 22, 2011
All-round talent: Brett Deledio returned to Kyabram, where he played junior cricket, in 2006 to play in a local Twenty20 match. Photo: Michael MaskellCricket is a sport facing big challenges. Against this backdrop, and in the lead-up to the Boxing Day Test, The Age has spoken to seven Australians who have played and loved the game, asking each: What is the state of play? Today, we speak to Richmond star Brett Deledio, a former junior state fast bowler who opted for a Sherrin over a Kookaburra. But his love for cricket remains, and he analyses the effect of Twenty20, the state of Test pitches, and the power struggle between sporting codes for supremacy.
BRETT Deledio made the percentage play and plumped for football over cricket, but he has not completely dispensed with the summer game. Over summer, the talented Tiger will spend his rostered days off assisting the Victorian cricket team in practice sessions.
He will help the Bushrangers hone their fielding with catching drills in warm-ups, and occasionally roll the arm over. Very slowly. "I just enjoy helping them out," Deledio explained. "Warm up with their fielding and all that sort of stuff and then every now and again, I might have a bit of a bowl but nothing too strenuous, it's only a few offies."
Richmond likes its players to have a vocation, or interest, outside of football. Deledio opted for cricket, viewing his second sport as preferable to the sedentary alternatives. "I don't really like studying and sitting behind a desk, so I thought, 'Well, my next love is cricket, so I may as well see if I can do something with that' and lucky enough [Richmond head of development] Timmy Livingstone knew Ben Robinson who is like player development for the Vic cricket side.
"That opened some doors for me and I was lucky enough, I just go over there and help them train, having a net session I sneakily roll my arm over every now and then."
The summer hobby might have been so much more for Deledio, who opened the bowling for the Victorian under-17 team that won the national championships in 2003-04. Another AFL No.1 draft pick, Marc Murphy, played in that imposing collection of sportsmen, alongside current Bushranger Aaron Finch. The New South Wales side they bested in the final - in which Deledio scored 85 - contained a hard-hitting right-hand bat called David Warner.
"Murph was an all-rounder as well. He batted at six. He made a ton, I think against ACT."
Deledio felt his 85 in the final was compiled patiently, on the instructions of the coach, but in fact it had taken only 92 balls and included 13 fours and a six. He was primarily a bowler at representative level.
The late David Hookes once eyed off Deledio, then a teen from Kyabram, as a prospective Victorian player, but the die was cast for football by then. In a familiar plotline for those who excel at both sports, Deledio was AFL-bound from his mid-teens, knowing that the high end of footy's job market (now 800 players at an average of $260,000) offered so many more places. At that point, he'd made All-Australian in football, but had missed selection in the Victorian under-15s.
"Footy was always my main preference. I saw more opportunity for me to, I don't know, play longer I suppose .?.?. it's so hard to get into an Australian side or to play at the top level. So you sort of put it on the backburner I guess.
"I suppose it was the under-15s where I missed out on the Vic cricket side but I'd already played in the Vic footy side and I was .?.?. All-Australian with the under-15s for footy but they decided to leave me out of the cricket side. So I decided that footy was going to always be No.?1 from then on I suppose. That was probably a simple answer, but there was more to it probably as well."
The division of cricket in summer and footy in winter seems more intact in country Victoria, perhaps, than in our state's metropolis. Deledio, thus, did not stop playing cricket in the year before he was drafted No.?1. "I kept playing mate. I wasn't ever going to stop playing because what else are you going to do in the summer? You can't train for footy the whole time, it gets a bit monotonous as well. I kept playing cricket and obviously I was lucky enough to be picked in that side."
No one would question Deledio's decision. He has won two best and fairests, established himself as an elite footballer and is paid at a level that only an international, or now Indian Premier League, cricket career could match. Yet, there are occasions when he is wistful about the game he might have played professionally.
"I suppose I do [think about cricket] when footy's not going so great. I always joke, [assistant coach and former teammate] Wayne Campbell always tells me that he was probably better than Glenn McGrath but probably not quite as quick. And I said, "Oh well, perhaps you did make the wrong decision Wayne'.
"When things go wrong, you often think, 'Bugger, I'd love to go and play cricket now' .?.?. [but] I don't know, it just seems, I mean there's a lot more pressure on you to perform [in cricket] and if you're performing then you're out .?.?. and you only really get one chance .?.?. because as soon as you're out you're sitting there for the rest of the day."
Notwithstanding the injuries to fast bowlers, Deledio views cricket as the physically easier gig. "Especially this time of year you're thinking, 'God, you know I'm running all these ks and stressing the body pretty heavily to get fit and all the cricketers have to do - and this is not meant to have a stab at them - is run 20 metres up and down a pitch pretty much. It's not as demanding, no way."
In his childhood, Deledio liked the "technical side" of batting, even as he "mucked around" in the backyard and schoolyard. "I loved being able to try and bowl fast, see what you can do with the ball."
Deledio, acknowledging his bowling bias, reckons the modern international wickets are too favourable to batsmen, who, in turn, flounder once the ball deviates off the pitch.
"I like the fast pace at which teams score these days. What I don't like is curators who prepare flat roads for batsmen to score millions of runs because that's just boring. Everyone loves when there's wickets falling and batsmen are getting hit .?.?. maybe that's a fast bowler talking!
"If you were preparing wickets with a bit more in them, then you'd get more people, I guess the game won't go for as long, but it's a lot more exciting. I mean they've experimented with playing music and all the whiz-bang stuff of T20, but you know people will go there to watch, you know, a good battle between batsman and bowler."
Twenty20 was "definitely harming" the longest form of the game "because people can't seem to stay in as soon as the deck's got any movement in it".
"As soon as it goes sideways a bit, they seem to nick out or whatever else or they [do] similar to Brad Haddin when he just danced down the wicket and tried to hit out. Now I mean I'm not sure about that move." He felt that Twenty20 was detrimental to Test cricket's spectator appeal, since "people will get bored with Test cricket after they've watched T20".
Deledio has the traditionalist's fondness for Test cricket, especially for the iconic ritual of Boxing Day.
"There's nothing better than the Boxing Day Test. I've always been travelling down to the beach on that day. I can't wait to get in the car and listen to it the whole way."
On the game's history, he offers little besides this observation, popular in this part of the world: "Shane Warne, I believe, is the best spinner because he doesn't throw it."
Those concerned about cricket's future - particularly of the AFL empire's steady erosion cricket's market share - should take note, not simply of Deledio's career choice, but of his assessment of the power equation: "Footy's your No. 1, without a doubt. It only goes on hold when the spring carnival comes around really. And even then there's a lot of photos of footballers that are going to the races."
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