Introducing The Grubber, a new weekly feature from All Out Cricket’s editor Phil Walker that gets under cricket’s crumbly surface.
Summer, 2009. Hazy? Let The Grubber shake the memory. Fred’s one-legged run out, Strauss’s special at Lord’s, Monty’s Welsh rebuttal, Lily Allen’s painted face?
Coming back? Now cast your mind back to Edgbaston, the third Test of that Ashes muckabout. There was a lad playing. Good stubble – northern sort. He’d been the best bowler in county cricket for two seasons. Onions, they called him.
Lily already had a soft spot for him; we did too. The way he attacked the stumps, those tight lines; wicket-to-wicket McGrathist precision. He brooded. He squinted through steely Gateshead eyes.
And his surprise bouncer got us all hot under the collar. None more so than Ricky Ponting, whose collar rarely sees much respite. At Birmingham he went after that bouncer, as he does, because he’s Punter, the boy with the scars who hooks anyone. Then something extraordinary happened.
Ponting nicked it. A bit late on the shot (and that’s what they say about Onions – that he’s on you, he’s on you), a top-edge to the keeper, and Punter was gone. Bounced out. This had never happened to him before. Ponting said so himself. But there, that summer, it did.
Graham Onions – Bunny to his mates (bunions, get it?) – was there at the start of England’s assault on the Test game. He was right in there, the perfect foil to the big lads, the ideal apprentice to Jimmy Anderson: a man of expectations. A Test bowler, no question. Sharp, skiddy, straight. That autumn in 2009 he was one of 14 players nominated for the ICC Cricketer of the Year.
That winter in South Africa, Onions added ‘cult hero’ to his quiver. At Centurion in the first Test, in at No.11, he blocked the last over of the match to deprive South Africa of the final wicket they needed. A month later at Cape Town, he did it again. To do it once was pushing it. To do it twice was just plain rude. He was in. He had the stuff.
Then: snap. The back goes. In a big way. Stress fracture. Cricket’s hideous mean streak exposed once more. On the cusp of something glorious to worrying every day for two years what’s to become of his life and career.
He didn’t bowl a ball in 2010. But in 2011, he returned; laying to rest fears he was crocked for good with 50 Championship wickets to put him back in the frame for England. And now Onions is back. Bowling for England, hitting the opener’s pads bang in front in his return game. They kept the faith in him because he kept it in himself. “2009 seems a long time ago,” he says now. “I’m here now and I want to make a difference – I want to be part of this team.”
During the dark times, it’s doubtful the sandcastles of Dubai, and a Pakistan Cricket Board XI, would have resonated that strongly. But he’ll take it. At 29, he’s been handed another opening into this extraordinary cricket team. Onions was there at the start of their ascent, a journey still very much in transit. Now he has a chance to see it through to the end. What a tearjerker that would be.
Bunny Back On The Boil
Introducing The Grubber, a new weekly feature from All Out Cricket’s editor Phil Walker that gets under cricket’s crumbly surface.
Summer, 2009. Hazy? Let The Grubber shake the memory. Fred’s one-legged run out, Strauss’s special at Lord’s, Monty’s Welsh rebuttal, Lily Allen’s painted face?
Coming back? Now cast your mind back to Edgbaston, the third Test of that Ashes muckabout. There was a lad playing. Good stubble – northern sort. He’d been the best bowler in county cricket for two seasons. Onions, they called him.
Lily already had a soft spot for him; we did too. The way he attacked the stumps, those tight lines; wicket-to-wicket McGrathist precision. He brooded. He squinted through steely Gateshead eyes.
And his surprise bouncer got us all hot under the collar. None more so than Ricky Ponting, whose collar rarely sees much respite. At Birmingham he went after that bouncer, as he does, because he’s Punter, the boy with the scars who hooks anyone. Then something extraordinary happened.
Ponting nicked it. A bit late on the shot (and that’s what they say about Onions – that he’s on you, he’s on you), a top-edge to the keeper, and Punter was gone. Bounced out. This had never happened to him before. Ponting said so himself. But there, that summer, it did.
Graham Onions – Bunny to his mates (bunions, get it?) – was there at the start of England’s assault on the Test game. He was right in there, the perfect foil to the big lads, the ideal apprentice to Jimmy Anderson: a man of expectations. A Test bowler, no question. Sharp, skiddy, straight. That autumn in 2009 he was one of 14 players nominated for the ICC Cricketer of the Year.
That winter in South Africa, Onions added ‘cult hero’ to his quiver. At Centurion in the first Test, in at No.11, he blocked the last over of the match to deprive South Africa of the final wicket they needed. A month later at Cape Town, he did it again. To do it once was pushing it. To do it twice was just plain rude. He was in. He had the stuff.
Then: snap. The back goes. In a big way. Stress fracture. Cricket’s hideous mean streak exposed once more. On the cusp of something glorious to worrying every day for two years what’s to become of his life and career.
He didn’t bowl a ball in 2010. But in 2011, he returned; laying to rest fears he was crocked for good with 50 Championship wickets to put him back in the frame for England. And now Onions is back. Bowling for England, hitting the opener’s pads bang in front in his return game. They kept the faith in him because he kept it in himself. “2009 seems a long time ago,” he says now. “I’m here now and I want to make a difference – I want to be part of this team.”
During the dark times, it’s doubtful the sandcastles of Dubai, and a Pakistan Cricket Board XI, would have resonated that strongly. But he’ll take it. At 29, he’s been handed another opening into this extraordinary cricket team. Onions was there at the start of their ascent, a journey still very much in transit. Now he has a chance to see it through to the end. What a tearjerker that would be.