Saving Grace

Damien Martyn never tried to look pretty. It just happened. The batting style groomed on junior grounds in Perth became a Test model and he can't understand the fuss of watchers who drool over it. There was no looking in the mirror preening as he pretended to lace boundaries around his hotel or bedroom. No copying of technique. "It's something that came with me as I was brought up," he says. "As a kid it turned out that way." Lucky Martyn, lucky us.

Don't assume Martyn hasn't, and doesn't, work hard. He makes things look so easy that it's tempting to believe it was always this way. It wasn't. In a batting order full of tales of redemption, Martyn's journey is the most gruelling and, ultimately, the most fulfilling.

Matthew Hayden, Justin Langer and Ricky Ponting were dropped and suffered on the outer, but Martyn was ostracised for six years because of a wafty cover-drive against South Africa at the SCG in the tensest of low chases. A metre either way and he could have had more than 100 Tests instead of 56. He is happy he got an eighth, is enjoying the "second chance", and accepts his playing mortality. "It's a good ride, we'll see how long it lasts," he says. Martyn climbed a mountain that for long grew only taller, and is now appreciating the rewarding walk down.

Martyn can make Mark Waugh's strokes look ugly and hurried. He defies the batting policy that says feet must go towards the pitch of the ball, and has helped a generation of children question and upset their manual-toting coaches. Instead, his head seals his graceful, and maddeningly effective, position while his lagoon-blue eyes reflect the white or red leather.

Calling his bat movements back-lift and follow-through is a cruel exaggeration. Describing the arc as a jab is crass. It's more the gentle swaying of a log bridge when the last person has stepped off. Bowlers regularly cheer a defensive shot internally before watching the ball gain pace either side of point or cover. Perhaps his rarest quality is that Martyn looks good even when he in getting out, as though the ball made the mistake by finding the edge instead of the middle. His results are punishing but often overlooked in the chaos his batting partners create.

Since the Sri Lanka series in March 2004, Martyn has sparkled 1608 runs at 61.84. In 17 Tests he made seven hundreds and six fifties. Remarkably, he's managed long periods in the middle and precious little time in the spotlight. On last year's tour to India he felt treated like a rock star and wasn't comfortable with the exposure. He looks like the sort of player who even his year-long travelling companions wouldn't really know.

Quiet, restrained and reserved, Martyn likes golf (his handicap is 11), time with his family, home-cooked meals and watching Australian rules football. "I'm just a sportsman," he says, but unlike so many athletes he means it. "I like to go out and play the game. I enjoy it here, it's fun." His cricket values are firm, and his list of on-field misdemeanours is limited to the occasional air-swings of the bat and head-down mutterings into his helmet. "I try and play it fair," he says. "I still get out and play it hard, but hard and fair."

A slightly husky delivery makes Martyn's speech sound like a loud whisper. There's some quiet suburban shyness mixed in with the sort of wariness that comes after being asked for 11 years about what happened at the SCG. "My personal life is pretty quiet," he says. "It might appear protective, but I'd rather let my bat do the talking." Listen carefully and he's not boring or evasive.

Martyn would rather go unnoticed but his brilliant run is making that difficult. Australia's line-up is not the place to expect a pocket of old-world calm but Martyn provides it like the fencer who spurns bullets to express himself with the epee and foil. Weaving and waving, he provides death by a thousand cuts and drives. Even his 12 Test hundreds haven't been big. He is a colour version of the pre-1930s batsmen who were done, dusted and dignified at three figures.

Accounting for the changing circumstances, the professionalism and the intense glare that dulls free spirits, Martyn is the modern incarnation of Australia's darling of the Golden Age. "He was great under all conditions of weather and ground," said Wisden's obituary of Victor Trumper. "He could play an orthodox game when he wished, but it was his ability to make big scores when orthodox methods were unavailing that lifted him above his fellows."

Over the past 16 months Martyn has done the same with defining performances at sea-level and altitude, in his backyard and in the most unfamiliar places. He ticked off hundreds when the ball spun square at Galle, Kandy and Chennai; he survived the green and seam of Nagpur and Wellington; and he hit a home century at Perth. Australia's Mr Natural has also become Mr Versatile.

"I don't get carried away with it," he says. "I'll have my ups and downs, so I try to keep my feet level. When I look back at the end of my career I might think of it as a special year."

The greatest achievement was his successful method against the slow bowlers in Sri Lanka and India. "They are the hardest places for us as touring sides," he says. "We are facing spinners like Harbhajan [Singh] and [Muttiah] Muralitharan, the sort we may never see again. Offspinners, doosras, that sort of thing. It was hard."

Martyn's personal triumphs, which led Australia to the 35-year-drought-breaking series victory over India, are more stunning when his background is analysed. Realistically, Martyn was the batsman least likely to conquer the subcontinent. Born in Darwin and raised on the concrete-hard back-foot surfaces of Perth, Martyn now safely reveals that he didn't feel comfortable facing spin until 1998, six years after his Test debut. "There's unfair criticism on Justin Langer and the guys from Perth when playing it because there's no chance for us to learn," he says. "For Western Australia we play five games at home and one game in Sydney where it spins. Kids here learn to play on fast wickets."

Martyn spent a lot of time watching Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid and decided to play right back, a plan he employed in Sri Lanka and mastered in India. Three times in the two series Australia had given up a lead of more than 90 when Martyn appeared in the second innings to sweat over a century and give his side the advantage. "Being behind gets you switched on more because you're in trouble and want to turn it around," he says. "At 2 for 200 you can get a bit lazy sitting around. If the side's in trouble, you are ready to fight."

Twice in Sri Lanka he engineered winning positions; at Chennai rain washed away his efforts alongside Jason Gillespie. The India series was sealed in Nagpur where he nearly matched Don Bradman with three centuries in consecutive innings, and he finished the seven Tests in Asia with 522 second-innings runs at 74.57. The man most doubted, the batsman most expected to make way for Michael Clarke in Sri Lanka, became the most privately celebrated.

Statistically, Martyn is a better player away - he averages seven runs more than his home mark of 49.25 - and he is proud of the achievement. "I've made more hundreds outside Australia than in it," he says. "I like that. Playing away from home is hard work. I love the challenge of being on the road. The odds are always against you."

Reaching the summit is more fulfilling when it looks out of reach. It never felt as far away for Martyn as it did on January 6, 1994. Aged 22, he had scored 59 - his third half-century in seven matches - in the first innings of the second Test at the SCG, and seemed to be slowly fulfilling his promise as another golden child. But with Australia needing only 117 to beat South Africa, Martyn walked out at 63 for 5 having seen Allan Border leave without adding to the fourth-evening total.

For 106 minutes and 58 balls Martyn hung on, defying a horrible pitch and brilliant bowling. On 6, Martyn switched off his defence mechanism to aim a boundary and reduce the margin to three; instead he drove Allan Donald to Andrew Hudson. Australia fell six short and Martyn was sentenced to a year out for each run.

How often do people ask about the SCG? "Probably too much," he says. "It's 11 years ago. I'd rather not talk about it. I've proved I can play at Test level."

Back at Western Australia, Martyn was made captain of his state and kept struggling. Off the field he had become a partner in a travel agency selling holidays to places he could have gone as a player. "It was something different," he says. "It was interesting to see how the business ran, but I wasn't in it day after day. I sold it when cricket started to get busy again."

Slowly the rehabilitation kicked in and he began to work towards regaining his once-gleaming status. There were stints with Australia A, runs for his state, and a regular place in the one-day side that fetched him tours to Pakistan, West Indies, England for the 1999 World Cup, and Zimbabwe.

Finally a Test chance came when Ricky Ponting seriously injured his ankle sliding into a boundary fence in a one-dayer at the SCG. Martyn went to New Zealand in 2000 knowing he was getting three Tests. "That was the stage to show the selectors and Steve Waugh, the captain at the time, that I was ready again," he says. With two half-centuries, including a crucial 89 not out which rescued Australia from 29 for 5, he did just that, and was comfortable leaving the side when Ponting returned. This wait was easy. He knew he was going back.

Martyn sees similarities with his position then and the ones of the current fringe players, Simon Katich and Brad Hodge. "You get a chance and you have to prove yourself in the small opportunities," he says. "Then when you get a full go, you've got to do it again." Martyn played one Test against West Indies as a replacement for Steve Waugh before making the impact in the 2001 Ashes series that had been expected of him almost a decade before.

In the first Test at Edgbaston he brought up his maiden Test century. Like four of his hundreds, it was overshadowed by the brutal brilliance of Adam Gilchrist. Two games later Martyn raised his bat at Headingley and was reborn as a Test player. He has scored two centuries in a series four more times since.

Martyn travels to England for his third tour there in the shadow of 4000 Test runs and is a pillar alongside Hayden, Langer, Ponting, and Shane Warne, Gillespie and Glenn McGrath. While his training for the tour started in April, he feels the series is over-hyped and has found the attention amusing. "We don't laugh at it, but we think it's a bit silly," he says. "Ex-players saying who'll be the best, who'll not be the best. As a group we try to close off. We're not that good that we'll just win it."

However, Martyn is not totally convinced by England's burst to No. 2 in the world on the back of their 2004 unbeaten streak. "The same thing happened in '93 and 2001," he says when asked if he is more excited by this series because of the opposition's improvement. "Their results have got better, but every time we go to England they get better - it's the same scenario."

When pushed, Martyn admits England are a better unit this time round. "Michael Vaughan is a good captain and they've got bowlers in Steve Harmison and Andrew Flintoff at 150kph. We're all looking forward to it because English conditions are always challenging. Australia have won easily there but it's never easy." The crammed, shorter tour and intense focus mean he is expecting to play much less golf than in '93.

The Ashes tour remains the pinnacle of Australia's four-year travelling cycle, and when the squad was named it brought speculation about which players would be on their last journey. Martyn doesn't say whether he'd like a fourth England trip, but he hopes his one-day goodbye will come in the 2007 World Cup. "It will be time to move on and give the young guys a go," he says.

There is no such generosity when it comes to his Test place, which he wants to keep for as long as possible. "I'm 33 but I'm fitter than I was at 21," he says. "Times are changing. You can make your debut at 27 or 28 and still play 80 Tests. I got my second career about then and I've played 56." It's 49 more than he thought would arrive after Sydney, and the ride doesn't feel like slowing. After the six-year lock-out, he deserves to hold on until he can't grip anymore.