If Mitchell Marsh leads his men as Australia’s captain for the 2024 T20 World Championships this month, there will be a blink of an eye.
At the age of 32, the great all-rounder finally seems to be entering his prime after enjoying a famous century at Headingley in the Ashes, winning the Allan Border medal as the player of the year. It is the brilliance of a man who walked on a low road to a higher place.
The West Australian says it is his life journey, not his cricket career, that will form the compass for his leadership of a 15-man unit that combines former action batsmen and raw power hitters. “The captain is all about connection,” Marsh says. “It doesn’t mean going to the pub for a drink – not everyone likes it as much as I do – it’s about being relatable and understanding who these guys are as people to build relationships and trust.”
Marsh himself has finally earned the trust of the Australian Cricket public after a hot decade in which his incredible Talent has remained largely unsatisfied. “In my first 10 years I was offered a lot of opportunities and I failed a lot,” he says. “I had to learn how to deal with this failure and it held me back. Every time I have failed, it has knocked me down, and if you want to succeed and fail again and again, life gets really difficult.”
But Marsh’s broad shoulders were destined to carry great expectations.
Coming from a proud cricketing lineage (father Geoff and older brother Shaun were both test players), he announced himself to the world as a teenager who, at 17, broke the Western Australian team and led the Australian under-19 team to the Cricket World Cup.
With his actionive batting and skilful swing-bowling, Marsh was made for the T20s. but despite making his debut for Australia in he has only played 53 caps in the Format. The same erratic pattern has unfolded in a rollercoaster 42-test career. “I worked a lot to find a perspective and get away from the results,” Marsh says with the grimaces of those “years when I takeed”.
The crash–denounced in the media, booed by local viewers during the Boxing Day test (“the hardest day of my career”), broke his hand and hit himself against a wall after another inexpensive – almost pushed Marsh into retirement. “There have certainly been times when I thought, “Do I want to play Cricket? I would call Shaun and say, “I don’t want to do this anymore. He was saying, “Shut up, buddy, you’re not done.’”
Lost in the darkness, Marsh has lost sight of his brightest moments: the great first test century at the Waca in the Ashes, another shortly after in Sydney with Shaun at the other end, his breathtaking 77 from 50 balls that won the T20 World Cup Final, or the 96 that won the Durban test of the “sandpaper” series and named him (briefly) Test vice-captain in the following reconstruction period.
“It took me a long time not to let the game dictate who I am as a person,” he says. “These days I know I don’t have to be the best cricketer in the world, as long as I’m helping to make my team win games. I can still be a good person, a good husband, a good family man. These are the things that really matter.”
Marsh is proud of the fact that he “tried again and again, came back again and again.”Even in Exile, he pursued the dream, working with Coach Scott Meuleman on his Pre-ball Routine and psychologist Matt Burgin on his breathing. The wedding with Greta Mack also helped. Most endearingly, Marsh has made himself the ultimate team leader, drink buyer, Consultant and comic relief for his teammates.
