Tuesday, May 28, 2002 For six months in 1991, when Paul Keating fell out of favour after unsuccessfully challenging Bob Hawke for the prime ministership, Australia unofficially boasted the World's Greatest Backbencher. Eleven years on and Australia is once again home to the World's Greatest Backbencher.

This time he also happens to be the World's Greatest Swing Bowler. And the World's Smiliest Swing Bowler. Not to mention the World's Handiest Number Nine. His name is Damien Fleming, he is unquestionably among the 13 or 14 finest cricketers in the land, and if he has had a decent night's sleep in the past month it will be a minor miracle.

Victoria's decision last week to cut Fleming from their 20-man state squad had nothing to do with age, for Fleming - at 32 - is two months younger than Glenn McGrath. It had nothing to do with personalities, for Fleming is universally regarded as a gentle, good-natured bloke. It had nothing to do with logic, for Fleming is still the most dangerous fast bowler in Victoria.

To suggest otherwise is hurtful and mystifying, and Fleming - in his own quiet way - seems both hurt and mystified. "It's not as if we've got a group of 21- and 22-year-olds tearing the place up," he pointed out last week. Quite so. Except that the decision to drop Fleming had nothing to do with any of that. It had everything to do with David Hookes, South Australia's favourite son, trying too hard too soon to stamp his authority on Victorian cricket.

Less than a month has passed since Victoria's bold or foolhardy - choose your own adjective - decision to appoint Hookes as coach. Already he is making his mark. As a batsman, Hookes made a living by playing his shots and thinking little about the consequences. He approached his cricketing afterlife as a media celebrity in much the same way. Now he has carried that philosophy into coaching. The result may be an Australian Test team minus the luxury of having Fleming on the sidelines.

It is only four weeks since the ACB themselves stripped Fleming of his national contract, but that decision never had the same sense of finality about it. Given Fleming's injury-riddled history, you could hardly blame Australia's selectors if they did not fancy paying him $110,000 a year to eat lamingtons on Acland Street and go shopping for tracksuit pants on Chapel Street. But you always suspected that if McGrath, Lee or Gillespie broke down then Fleming - lucrative contract or not - was the man they would turn to. There is nothing revolutionary, after all, about an uncontracted player being called up from state cricket to Test cricket.

Going from grade cricket to Test cricket is another matter. Peter Taylor might have done it 15 years ago but that was back in the days when Test, state and grade cricket were different tiers - not different planets. It is unthinkable nowadays.

Which leaves Fleming with one option: he must pack up his outswinger and go west. Fleming, like Terry Alderman and Ken MacLeay before him, was born to bowl into the Fremantle Doctor. In two Tests at the WACA he has taken 14 wickets, one every 30 balls, at an average of 16.07. A move to Perth may be just the thing to give his career the kick-along it needs.

The problem is he might never get there. By waiting until late-May before dropping their bombshell, Victoria have left Fleming without a contract at a time when most of the interstate contracts have been finalised. Put that down as another black mark against Hookes. In fact, the timing of Fleming's sacking is perhaps the shabbiest aspect of the whole shabby affair.

It seems a harsh way to treat a man who has given so much to a state that has unearthed so few decent fast bowlers. Merv Hughes, Max Walker and Alan Connolly were essentially likeable, hard-working over-achievers - nothing more, nothing less. Rodney Hogg was a brutal hit-man but he was at his most lethal only after moving to Adelaide. Ditto Ted McDonald ninety years earlier, who was really a Launceston lad. After that come the worthy plodders: Ian Meckiff, Alan Hurst, Ian Callen, Tony Dodemaide, Paul Reiffel. It is not too far-fetched to suggest that Fleming is the most talented Victorian fast bowler of the last century - and even he was born in Bentley, a sleepy suburb of Perth. It is high time he went home.

Whatever happens from here, Fleming can at least claim to have squeezed more into an abbreviated career than most bowlers manage in a lifetime. His nerveless bowling at the death helped Australia win one World Cup and make the final of another. His debut hat-trick at Rawalpindi (Aamir Malik, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Salim Malik) was one of the most distinguished of all Test hat-tricks. And at the MCG in 1998-99 he produced the most magical over of any Australian bowler in recent memory.

It was the second over of England's second innings and poor Mike Atherton, hampered by a bad back and a diminishing stomach for a fight, could not lay bat on ball. For four deliveries Fleming got the ball to fizz, bounce and bend both ways. With the fifth, a perfect leg-cutter, he knocked out Atherton's off stump. It was pure genius.

If there is any justice the next four years will contain a few more moments like that one. It is worth remembering that Paul Keating was 47 when he launched his failed leadership bid. As it turned out he had only four years in politics left in him, but they were his best four years, full of daring, imagination and invention.

In four years Fleming will be 36. That gives him ample time to play in another World Cup-winning side and to take, say, another 150 Test wickets. And to bowl plenty more overs like the one he nailed Atherton with. Anything less and David Hookes will have a lot to answer for.

Chris Ryan is a former managing editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly and a former Darwin correspondent of the Melbourne Age.

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