Fingers on the paint: McDermott enters Hall of Fame

Craig McDermott had already taken 41 Test wickets when he was offered a small dose of wisdom that would transform him from exciting young tearaway to an Australian Cricket Hall of Famer.

Australia had been soundly beaten by a Richard Hadlee-inspired New Zealand at the Gabba in 1985, and McDermott and his fellow beleaguered fast bowlers were suffering through a session of what coach Bob Simpson termed "naughty-boy nets" out in the middle.

Down from the Cricketers' Club, across the dog track and out to the middle wandered Ray Lindwall, suited and booted and several beers deep.

"He said, 'Show me how you hold the ball, son'," McDermott tells cricket.com.au.

"I used to put my fingers pretty close together on the seam.

"He said, 'Put your fingers on the paint, son – you'll swing it a lot more'.

"So that was just outside the seam, just on the last two stitches or a little bit wider than that.

"It changed the way I could swing the ball immediately."

Upon reaching the Australian set-up as a teenager, McDermott doesn't recall receiving much, if any, technical advice. There were no bowling coaches then and the snippets of information proffered to him came from his predecessors.

Jeff Thomson talked to him about aggression. Dennis Lillee extolled the virtues of fitness. Both helped shape a young, raw Brisbanite into one of the great fast bowlers of his era, a man who took more Test wickets (291) between his debut in 1984 and his retirement in 1996 than anyone but West Indian legend Courtney Walsh (293).

It was Lindwall's advice though, that McDermott remembers most fondly, both for the way it dramatically improved his chief weapon – the outswinger – and the way it has informed his own teachings since.

"I could bowl outswingers before that," he explains, "but Ray's advice gave me more consistency and allowed me to swing the ball better and later."

McDermott took 10 wickets in his first two Tests against West Indies in Australia, then 30 more on the '85 Ashes tour. All before turning 21. His method of success was simple and time-honoured.

"I was fast, I was pretty accurate, I could swing the ball, and I was fit," he says.

By the time the 1987 World Cup rolled around, he had become a regular in Australia's ODI side though his numbers – 43 wickets in 39 matches at an average of 37 – gave no inkling as to what would follow in the subcontinent-based tournament. Nor did two wicketless Tests in Chennai and Delhi.

McDermott took 18 wickets – then the most-ever at a World Cup – as Australia crashed the party, claiming what remains easily the most unlikely of their five World Cup titles.

However, his dizzying rise was followed just as swiftly by a jarring comedown, as the young paceman failed to maintain the standards he had set himself in both preparation and performance.

"I rested on my laurels," he says. "I came back from the World Cup and thought, I can do this without training, which you can't.

"I was just a young bloke, so it was pretty easy to make that mistake."

McDermott had been an athletics champion at school and the demands of fitness training in cricket had come easily to him, but he slipped into a malaise and slackened off. He began eating "too much of the wrong stuff" and his playing weight of 90-92kg became a distant ideal.

By the end of the 1988-89 season, he had blown out to 105kg and he was relegated to 12th man duties for Queensland's final Sheffield Shield match against the Blues in Sydney.

"Something had to change," he says. "So I didn't have a drink for 18 months. No dairy products. No sugar. No nothing.

"And at a dinner one night I bumped into a bloke called Trevor Hendy (the renowned ironman).

"He said, 'Why don't you come and train with me through the winter?'

"I spent two weeks with him and that was a whole new level. I worked my arse off.

"I came back to Queensland training, walked in, the guys hadn't seen me for three or four months and they were like, 'Holy hell, what's going on here?'

"I was ready to go."

McDermott took 54 wickets that Shield season – then a Queensland record and the third-highest tally of all time – and it was clear to him that his renewed fitness focus had been the foundation.

As well as Hendy's influence, he had found an inspiring training partner within the state squad in John Maguire, a paceman who had played three Tests and 23 ODIs in 1983-84.

"Some guys hated doing fitness work, running grandstands," he says. "I loved it. I used to run twice a day and do weights twice a day for about six years.

"And John was probably at the forefront of teaching me how to do that."

Chapter two of McDermott's Test career aligns neatly with a shift in Australia's fortunes, as a generation that had been forged from the fire of the 1980s began finding their feet in the new decade.

McDermott took 18 wickets in his first two Tests back in the side, then spearheaded Australia's trip to the Caribbean in March-April 1991. He took 24 wickets in five Tests and 12 in the ODIs – the most from either side in both series.

Australia lost the Test series 2-1 but prevailed 4-1 in the ODIs, and returned home with a feeling they had closed the gap on the once-untouchable West Indies. McDermott was in no small part responsible for that. He had bowled with pace, control and aggression, and revelled in the fury of the clashes in front of heaving Caribbean crowds.

Image Id: 12A4746FCDB34C1683A777141C1D54DE Image Caption: McDermott during the fifth Test in Antigua, 1991

"Courtney (Walsh) split me for 11 stitches across the top of my eye in a practice match and I ended up in hospital," he remembers.

"But I got even. I broke Desmond (Haynes') toe, (Gordon) Greenidge's finger, and Gus Logie's cheekbone."

McDermott remained Australia's premier paceman for the first half of the 1990s (211 of his Test wickets came in that decade) though untimely injuries restricted his involvement in a couple of marquee series; a twisted bowel resulted in him playing just two of the six-Test Ashes in '93, while a broken ankle prevented him being part of Australia's breakthrough series win in the Caribbean in '95.

In between, he enjoyed his last truly great series. In five Ashes Tests on home soil, on pitches more tailored to suit leg-spinning wonderkid Shane Warne, he took 32 wickets to be named player of the series.

Image Id: 2204A7F2C6B44DB3801828CA3FA248A6 Image Caption: McDermott was player of the series in the 1994-95 Ashes // Getty

Some fifteen years separated the end of McDermott's international playing days with his return to that scene as a fast-bowling coach, where in 2011 he quickly began preaching what he had practiced; his simple philosophy centred upon pitching the ball up to allow it to swing.

The man and his methods were readily accepted by Australia's pace contingent at the time, led primarily by Peter Siddle, whose career McDermott helped rejuvenate.

To Siddle, and Mitchell Johnson, he offered some straightforward advice: "Put your fingers on the paint, son."

His two stints as Australia's fast-bowling coach (2011-12, 2013-16) were highlighted by home whitewashes of India and England. Both were triumphs built around a healthy blend of full-pitched, swinging deliveries and a strong dose of short-pitched intimidation designed to confuse the batsmen's footwork.

Image Id: E8F50CFD2BA049C08BD07602EE00C05C Image Caption: Working with Peter Siddle in the lead-up to the 2013-14 Ashes // Getty

McDermott left his coaching post four years ago but mentoring young fast bowlers remains a passion. On late Wednesday afternoons he can be seen offering one-one-one tutelage at St Joseph's College in Brisbane, while he also coaches a Gold Coast-based side in which his teenage son, Zac, plays.

"I made a difference with a number of the Australian bowlers – Siddle, (Mitchell) Starc and so forth," he says.

"But at that young age group, when they're just getting enough strength to hold their action, you can get their technique right and really make a difference."