Wisden overview
No contemporary cricketer, Tendulkar aside, makes batting look so simple as Damien Martyn. But it was not always thus. For the brash 21-year-old who waltzed into the Australian team at Dean Jones's expense, batting was an exercise in extravagance. To defend was to display weakness - a policy that backfired in 1993-94 when Martyn's airy square-drive at a crucial moment in Sydney triggered a five-run defeat by South Africa and a seven-year hitch to his own promising career. By the time Western Australia, wanting a pretty face to spearhead their marketing campaign, had made him captain at 23, Martyn looked a tormented man. All the more remarkable, then, that he has blossomed into the relaxed, classical, feathery artist of today. He is an elastic fieldsman, a lively medium-pacer and an old-style batsman whose first movement is back. He plays with a high elbow, a still head, a golfer's deft touch, and has all the shots, including perhaps the most brutal reverse-sweep in the game. Mostly, though, Martyn sticks to the textbook and composes pristine hundreds which, like the feats of the best wicketkeepers, pass almost unnoticed: an observation supported by the curious fact that, despite a Test average in the fifties, he reached the age of 30 without winning a man-of-the-match award. He was the quiet man of the 2003 World CUp-winning side, too, playing a minor role until he spanked 88 not out in the final - with a broken finger that later kept him out of a West Indian tour. Chris Ryan

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