In the shadow of the ghost of the old Doug Walters Stand, Travis Head was forging irresistible parallels.
Folk heroes have been an important accessory to cricket in Australia, where followers like to see themselves, or some imagined aspect of themselves, reflected in a chosen wearer of the baggy green.
They love purity and excellence too, but for every man in a high castle, every Greg Chappell or Steve Smith, there has to be a man in the street, a Walters or a Head.
Travis Head was in fine form at the SCG on Monday.Credit: Getty Images
The stylistic likenesses were uncanny as Head launched into the England bowlers on a late and increasingly murky Monday afternoon. Head’s opening boundaries, nonchalant pull shots to the Ladies Stand, were pure Dougie. England adjusted their lines but kept bowling half-trackers, which Head cut square, falling away to the leg, a left-handed mirror image of you know who.
Which is not to say that Head didn’t help himself to full balls when they came, but rather than step into his drives he walks into them from a front-on position, an unconventional stroke straight out of the uncoachable manual of that great ancestral innovator.
Love lasts longer than admiration, and the way he’s going, Head will be as beloved as Walters.
Read the full column from Malcolm Knox here.