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Jason Gillespie -
The Bullet Man |
A Feature by Karthik Narayan
 A
Jesus Christ look alike does play cricket!
Shocking, right? But as we speak, Jason
Gillespie runs down to bowl a delivery in the
nets. The guy is a spitting image of Jesus
reincarnate! With the unshaven beard, the long
mane of this fast bowler, he does look like
Jesus… spreading the joy of love for the game to
all.
He made his test debut
against the West Indies at Sydney in Dec 1996,
and took two wickets on debut in the first
innings. Bowling at second change, he got the
wickets of Ambrose and Kenneth Benjamin clean
bowled. Naturally he was operating at a good
pace. Though, He did not have much bowling in
the second innings thanks to the senior bowlers
Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath (later his new
ball bowling partner) who shook the West Indian
batting and won the match for Australia.
 His bowling sting did not
really show in the rest of that series, he was
always the second change; the opposition would
be almost on the mat by the time he came in to
bowl. So he did not have much to really look
forward to, but his first real flourish came in
1997 when Australia toured South Africa. He
returned with a tally of 14 wickets in the three
tests there.
Then the 1997 Ashes in England was another good
series for this tall lanky fast bowler, who at
that time sported a pony tail; he had the
English hopping all around with his pace and a
rich haul of 16 wickets in 4 tests followed.
Soon after, he was a regular in the side with
Kasprowicz not regular in the team.
13.4 - 1 - 37 - 7 in the 4th Test Vs Eng
in Eng, 1997 at Leeds has been his best bowling
in all of 55 tests till date. He spat fire in
that debut Ashes series with sheer pace and grit
to send the English batsman packing back to the
dressing room thinking of answers to this pace
battery. That was also when McGrath had just
humiliated them at Lord’s two tests before this
one. In ODIs, he was just a slingshot bowler who
bowled with pace and fire early on in his
career, his prime was the three five wicket
hauls in 77 ODIs.
The interesting thing about his five wicket
hauls is that, that first was against Pakistanis
at Kenya in 2002 when he made the Pakis totally
submit to his super bowling of 10-2-22-5.
Notably, that is his best bowling of his career
so far. In the Final of the same Tournament he
was massacred by the Pakis and yet returned
figures of a highly volatile and expensive
10-1-70-5. His next and last fiver was at Harare
when Australia toured the minnows, again
Gillespie making the batsman swiping and
slashing here and there with figures of 10 –
2 – 32 - 5.
 Australia went to Sri
Lanka to tame the Lions in their den as they
always do. But in the first test at Kandy in
1999, horror struck for the tourists. After a
silent first innings bowling performance, and a
good batting performance of 41 in a graveyard of
a track, where the Aussies were bowled out for
188, disaster struck on Sept 10, 1999, (if it
were Sept 11, we would have sniffed something
fishy!). Steve Waugh and Gillespie ran in to
take a skier and ran into each other, and it was
a major injury for both the players. Waugh broke
his nose and Gillespie had a leg injury as well.
Both had to be hospitalized. That was the
turning point in this placeman’s career, which
stopped a blooming career for a short while.
Well coming back from injury is difficult,
getting back into the Aussie team is the worst
thing one can ever think of. It’s more difficult
than choosing the captain of the Indian team!
After battling his life threatening injury for 2
years, finally Jason came back into the Aussie
team in the second test against West Indies at
Perth in 2000-01 when the Aussies were in an all
winning streak. He had lost most of his pace, he
had to work more on guile rather than go all out
with speed. He operated with guile and yet was a
handful for the meek WI who surrendered without
much to think about. Then after there was no
stopping Gillespie… the Ashes 2001 followed, and
soon after this bowler had a place behind his
figures for the wickets column.
Starting his career as a bowler who would rarely
get a taste of the white cherry at its shiniest
moment, he had his chance finally when the
senior bowlers like McGrath was injured and Paul
Reiffel retired. Australia was trying new
bowlers like Adam Dale, and then Gillespie
became the bowler chosen to take the new ball.
Brett Lee came along soon, and the Aussie pace
battery was strengthened once again. Gillespie
became a revelation, a rebellion bowler who
relied on his good three quarters length and
incisive cutters more than ever. Runs were hard
to come by, and wickets tumbled upon another.
Jason was a success on
all the pitches he played in and got heaps of
the opening batsmen out for Australia and made
the early breakthroughs for the Warne's and
Lee's to really get an eye in and look for
additional wickets. Now with McGrath back in the
side and with these two sharing the new ball,
Aussie bowling packs a punch with the early
wickets and the feast of wins overseas and
everywhere they play… home or away, it doesn’t
matter!
In the recently concluded
test at Bangalore in the ongoing Australia tour
of India 2004, he emulated his current skipper
Adam Gilchrist by showing his sportsmanship by
walking when he knew he had bat-padded the ball
from Harbhajan to forward shirt leg even as the
Umpire Steve Bucknor turned it down as not out!
 He recently became
Cricket's version of the Goran Ivanisevic, when
he stopped the hair cuts and grew long hair and
did not shave off his French beards perhaps,
like vowing that he will not shave until the day
he retires or when the wickets dry up on him.
We at Cricketfundas.com
wish that day will never come when he hangs ups
his boots and says, “Mates, I’m going to finally
shave!” We wish him more unshaven seasons of
cricket and the evergreen spells of cricket with
the ball.
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