Oz catcher-in-the-fly, straight-talking mentor, Rodney Marsh no more

Had never seen the advert till now, but prompted by news of Marsh’s death, a google search was done and it threw up the advert. It was real, just as it was described to us by some Mr Know-it-all, and a laughter escaped the lips. What would Marsh do?!

Rodney Marsh, 74, suffered a heart attack while enroute to a charity event in Queensland. (File)

This is what he did: he drank (45 cans of beer enroute to the 1983 world cup), he jumped in front of second slip to pluck catches, he hit vital runs (once caned Lance Cairns for 22 runs in an over), he bet, he was apparently hurt that he was never made the Australian captain, he mentored generations of cricketers in Australia and England and his walrus-moustache, girth, mirth, sledging are all part of cricketing folklore. The first time one read about the term The Aussie Larrikin, the mind automatically went to him. Not that it was entirely true – Merv Hughes probably fit it better – but that was the kind of popular hold he had on us.

“You are a f******g idiot!” The recipient of the cuss, the legendary Ian Chappell looked up at Rod Marsh and wondered if it was anything to do with the previous evening at the bar. They were in middle of a Test match, Chappell was still a new captain having recently taken over from Bill Lawry when the verbal spray drenched him. “It’s a seamer’s paradise and you’ve got two spinners on. Get them off and get a seamer on, it doesn’t matter which one,” the walrus-moustached Marsh barked.

It made Chappell realise his error; that he was still captaining as if he were at his home ground Adelaide Oval. “I got a few lessons like that. You want people around you that tell you the truth, and I was lucky to have a gang of them,” Chappell would say later.

Chief among the gang members that had the fierce-willed Dennis Lillee, his own brother Greg Chappell, the popular Doug Walters, was Rodney Marsh. It was Ian Chappell who unfortunately called him “Iron Gloves’ on one of his early encounters and that label stuck for a long while. It was true that Marsh was initially picked for his batting – he was the pioneer of Adam Gilchrists and MS Dhonis, but pretty soon, he had learnt how to melt the iron from his gloves.

Ray Jennings is known as the RCB coach who first predicted Virat Kohli would become captain of not just that franchise, but of India. But he was also an incredibly agile wicketkeeper. A decade back, he had shown a CD of some of his catches in South Africa’s domestic matches. The jaw dropped. Eyes bulged. There he was diving past bewildered slip fielders twisted in weird angles, watching him fly past them.

A “wow” slipped out on its own and Jennings looked up and said, “you should have seen Marsh keep, then!” Just a photographic evidence would do, though innumerable videos do exist on the ether. The catch of Tony Greig from the 1979 World Cup. The first slipper Ian Chappell is twisted at an angle, Greig’s head is yanked back for some masochism, and Marsh is captured, flying past Chappell with the ball pouched in his extended arm. As Marsh got up to celebrate with his mates, Chappel shot out, he recalled now to Channel 9, “Listen, you fat b*****d, I don’t mind you pinching them on my left hand, but the ones on my right are mine!’ That’s how we used to talk to each other, and it’s probably one of the reasons we got on so well, we knew exactly where we stood with each other.”

Stories abound of Marsh’s playing days – the legendary tag of ‘caught Marsh, bowled Lillee’ about his partnership with the famous pacer, his experiences of keeping to the fastest bowler of ’em all Jeff Thompson, whose pre-season training was to hunt down pigs with bare hands, of him betting against his own team in the famous 1981 Botham Test. More will come out in a day or two. Lap it all up for sure, but to know the man, seek out the gif or the video of him telling off his mate Greg Chappell not to to do the unthinkable of asking his brother Trevor to roll an under-arm delivery.

As soon as he realises what his friend was thinking, Rod Marsh, hands across his chest (another famed image of him, that), can be seen shaking his head and yelling out, “Don’t do it Mate!” Not that his friend listened.

Not that he was a saint. Perhaps, because he was disappointed for being overlooked as captain after Greg Chappell’s retirement, he and Lillee weren’t at their best behaviour with the new captain Kim Hughes. He was also old-fashioned in some ways.

Opponents were disliked if they didn’t address him and other senior players by their Christian names. Kerry o Keefe once wrote, “if, say, Marsh on passing Glenn Turner at nets, offered “Good morning, Glenn how are you?” And only received “Morning! All right?!” Marsh would feel aggrieved.

The much younger Mike Whitney once sent him off after dismissing him in a domestic game, “F*** off”!”
“Pardon?” went Marsh.

“You think I am afraid of you?,” Whitney said not ready to back off.

“Get off the ground you f****n prick!”

That evening, feeling remorseful, Whitney says he went to shake hands and got a spray, “You think you are a big fu****g whirl. But you can’t f*****g play!”

Before he could carry out his instinct to hit Marsh, the manager pushed Whitney aside and locked the door. “Rod and I didn’t speak to each other for nearly 10 years!” wrote Whitney.

“Rodney thought me telling him after bouncing was a terrible thing, that I didn’t show respect. Yet what they did to Kim (Hughes) in 1981 was bad. How could they be so right there and be disgusted with my behaviour?”

Officials of the Australian cricket team observe a minute silent to pay tribute to late Rod Marsh prior to start of 1st day play of the first Test match between Pakistan and Australia at the Pindi Stadium, in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Friday, March 4, 2022. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)

Be that as it may, Marsh blossomed as a mentor and coach for a whole slew of younger lot from Adam Gilchrist to Kevin Pietersen to Alastair Cook. Gilchrist recalled in his book how Marsh once invited the young kids to his home for barbeque. Drinks were had. When it was well past Cinderella hour, Marsh told them to come to the pool at 6 am. Half the kids struggled next morning. Gilchrist says the message was clear. If you can’t handle it next day, don’t overdo the previous night just because you heard tales about us.

“Alcohol and chlorine doesn’t mix well,” Gilchrist wrote about his lesson learnt. Perhaps for them. Not for Marsh.

But what did Marsh do with his vaseline? The answer is blowing in the wind.