The summer of Mitch

Some time well in the future, beyond our contemporary grasp,

Old men who’ve weathered life’s travails will shake their heads and gasp

They’ll share their drinks and memories, their nerves will start to twitch

As nostalgia sends their minds back to a summer owned by Mitch

The baggy green in turmoil from a winter to forget

Without a win in nine long Tests, they’d barely posed a threat

A build-up of pyjama games, a team still to be decided

Most Australians feared the worst: the Ashes could be quite lopsided

But this was cricket’s grandest clash between sport’s oldest rivals

And the history books are littered with inspirational revivals

Still, it seemed delusionary – this team had learned to fail

Could they really be relied upon to return the holy grail?

The truth was they were missing something hard to find in sport

An intangible you cannot teach, a gem that can’t be bought

An x-factor, a winning edge, call it what you might

It’s the difference between standing tall and calling off the fight

Yet in four days at the Gabba it came from somewhere unexpected

From a man who’d been maligned and controversially selected

Unleashing bolts of lightning like Australia’s god of thunder

The Tearaway from Townsville became the Darling of Down Under

His bumpers and his searing pace had the Poms in disarray

The filthy mo, the deadly stare, the Lillee of his day

In Adelaide his lethal spell entranced our sunburnt nation

Could this left arm sent from heaven deliver ultimate salvation?

The fullness of his impact meant in three Tests it was finished

The will of Cook and his hapless troops had rapidly diminished

And just as Mitch had awoken a country’s ailing sense of pride

He’d also drawn a line under a champion England side

Some thirty-seven wickets at a tick over thirteen

Speak only to a fraction of the performances we’d seen

Because numbers and statistics are but footnotes in this story

They tell nothing of the drama or the unadulterated glory

But beyond even the Ashes a defining test awaited

Against the Proteas in Africa might his impact be negated?

Would his brutal tactics get results, could he maintain his freakish form

Or was this all an aberration – a departure from the norm?

Question marks still lingering, his answer was emphatic

A dozen scalps in just one Test, the carnage was dramatic

The reaction was immediate, a featherbed prepared

On the road of Port Elizabeth, the South Africans were spared

In a cracking match in Cape Town he was back among the action

Against the best team in the world he gained that winning satisfaction

Now on his quiet days the question’s asked – is the ‘Mitch effect’ a myth?

One man’s best qualified to answer that – his name is Graeme Smith

And so well into the future, beyond your contemporary grasp,

You’ll recall the feats of Johnson and you’ll shake your head and gasp,

You’ll share your drinks and memories, your nerves will start to twitch

As nostalgia sends your mind back to a summer owned by Mitch