Shaun and Mitchell Marsh are about to walk out onto the Gabba as the seventh pair of brothers to play together in a Test for Australia, years after spending countless hours of backyard cricket during their childhood
Brydon Coverdale16-Dec-2014It’s no wonder Mitchell Marsh became an allrounder and Shaun Marsh a specialist batsman. As kids, there were countless hours of backyard cricket played on the tennis court at home in the Perth suburb of Jandakot, but very few of those involved Shaun bowling to Mitchell. Eight years older, Shaun had all the authority.”I didn’t get much sympathy from Shaun,” Mitchell said. “I usually had to pretty much beg him to play and then I’d just bowl and once he’d had enough he’d hit the ball into the bushes and that was it. That was generally how it played out.”Shaun does not especially dispute his younger brother’s version of events.”It’s about an eight-year age difference,” Shaun said. “Mitch never really got a bat. I gave him a bat every now and then to keep him interested. We had a lot of fun playing out there.”Well, one of them did anyway.Now, more than a decade and a half later, they are about to walk out onto the Gabba as the seventh pair of brothers to play together in a Test for Australia, joining Alec and Charles Bannerman, George and Walter Giffen, Dave and Ned Gregory, Albert and Harry Trott, Greg and Ian Chappell, and Steve and Mark Waugh.And you can bet that the Marshes are the only one of those sets who travelled with the Australian team as kids. When their dad, Geoff, became coach of the national team in 1996, the boys were often seen in the Australian changing rooms. The Waughs, of course, were there too, unaware the two young Marsh lads would join their elite list one day.”It’s going to be unbelievable,” Mitchell said. “It’s something we never really thought we’d get to do. Over the last 12 months we’ve sat down and said it’s something that we both wanted to achieve. It’s going to be a great five days and hopefully we can both do well and win for Australia.”The two brothers enter the Test with different needs. Shaun, at 31, is ready for his fourth stint as a Test cricketer, and wants to show there is more to him than ducks (six from 15 Test innings) and hundreds (two). Last time India toured Australia, Shaun had a disastrous series with only 17 runs from six innings at 2.83.But his current form is better – this Shield season he has managed two centuries from five games and had 371 runs at 61.83. He must also manage an elbow injury embarrassingly sustained while celebrating a catch with a throw into the air; he believes it will prevent him from hurling the ball in from the fence in this Test.The 23-year-old Mitchell is the incumbent No. 6 and has averaged over 40 from the first three Tests of his career, but is in the side as an allrounder and is still yet to claim a Test victim, with an aggregate of 0 for 150 from 55 overs.”As you can see there’s no pressure from the coach,” Mitchell said, after a smiling Darren Lehmann walked past and heckled him with “how about some wickets?”Batting at Nos. 5 and 6, the brothers have a good chance of being at the crease together. Mitchell said he treated Shaun like any other team-mate while batting, but he was reluctant to be drawn on their very un-Waugh-like record of never having been involved in a run-out together.”I don’t think I can talk about that, it’s a bad omen,” Mitchell said. “I don’t think we’ve had one yet.”Presumably when they bat together, Mitchell carries the conversation. It is certainly the case during their frequent phone chats when one brother or other is playing in another part of the world.”Shaun is a pretty quiet fella, so I do most of the talking,” Mitchell said. “We’re like brothers and best mates, so we always keep in contact.”Shaun has always been something of an idol for Mitchell. Shaun remembers their dad Geoff playing for Australia but that was before Mitchell’s time, and he instead saw his older brother move through the ranks of state cricket to the international scene, to become a Test cricketer in 2011.”When Shaun first came onto the scene playing for Australia I was…able to watch him and get that hunger to play for Australia and at that stage I was playing for Western Australia,” Mitchell said. “Now we hopefully get an opportunity to play together for Australia and it’s going to be an unbelievable experience.”Even during those one-sided backyard games Mitchell looked up to his brother, so much so that he even tried to bat left-handed like Shaun.”I tried that when I was young but I was no good left-handed,” Mitchell said.Perhaps that’s why he never pinpointed the bushes like Shaun.
