Brilliant and brash, Marsh defined cricket's revolution

It's difficult to picture a cricketer more intrinsically and enduringly emblematic of his epoch than Rodney Marsh.

The former wicketkeeper, coach, selector and administrator who died today aged 74 had devoted his adult life to the game that defined it, but it was his central role in the revolutions that rocked cricket through the 1970s that lives on at the forefront of Australia's sporting memory.

Marsh was everything that transformative decade came to represent.

Where previous Australia glovemen were largely buttoned-down custodians for whom the term 'tidy' was considered the pre-eminent endorsement, Marsh's technical and tactical brilliance was often overshadowed by gravity-defying acrobatics and bat-wielding pyrotechnics.

With shirt unbuttoned and forearms often exposed (Marsh strategically rolled up his sleeves to protect his elbows from grazing as he dived behind the stumps) he became a hirsute hero as Australia pioneered the furious fast bowling and slick marketing that would forever change cricket.

The first of those fundamental shifts can be traced back to Marsh's partnership with Dennis Lillee, with the duo still sharing the record of most successful bowler-fielder pairing in Tests having combined for 95 dismissals (five more than c Gilchrist b McGrath).

But despite their shared Perth pedigree and the revered place they occupy in cricket folklore, it took a while for the brash keeper and the initially introverted fast bowler to forge a friendship.

Marsh was born into a sports-loving family at Armadale in Perth's south where his truck driver father (Ken, an all-rounder with the local grade club) and older brother (Graham, later a professional golfer) exhausted themselves throwing catches at young Rod after he was introduced to wicketkeeping at primary school.

Marsh's mother (Barbara) had hoped her younger son would pursue the piano talent he honed over two-hour practice sessions each day which, in turn, contributed to the disconnect between future friends when they first met as members of a WA Colts cricket team in 1966.

"He was a scruffy, overweight, beer-swilling intellectual, a pianist and a good singer," Lillee would later recall of his first impressions of Marsh.

"He was not my sort of person and I wasn't his choice of friend because I was too straight and didn't drink."

But his predilection for the piano was not Marsh's only point of difference as he embarked on the dream he first envisioned as an eight-year-old – to become a Test cricketer.

Having forced his way into West Perth's A-grade team only to find his path to Sheffield Shield ranks blocked by incumbent keeper Gordon Becker, Marsh refused to quell his ambition and vowed if he made enough runs the state selectors would have to consider him as a specialist batter.

Despite Lillee's early assessment of Marsh as a "hooker, cutter and a slogger", the left-hander with the crouching stance scored a century batting at number four in his maiden first-class match against a touring 1968-69 West Indies outfit that featured feared speedsters Wes Hall and Charlie Griffith.

At that point, no Australia wicketkeeper had scored a Test century and it was Marsh's innate desire to hit "every ball as hard as he could" that was one of two features that stood out to Ian Chappell when they first encountered each other a fortnight later.

The other was the extraordinary girth of Marsh's calves, which Chappell claimed forced the heavily-set figure to constantly repair the ripped seams of his cricket trousers with safety pins.

"It's a shame you can't walk on your hands, because with those legs you could bowl really fast," Lillee reputedly told his long-time teammate early in their playing days.

But it wasn't Marsh's physical dimensions that initially caught the eye of cricket fans.

The decision by Australia's Don Bradman-led selection panel to install Marsh ahead of Queensland's John McLean as replacement for incumbent Brian Taber – to bolster the Test team's batting and provide a more combative on-field presence – ensured Marsh was met with jeers in his Test debut against England at the Gabba in 1970.

Not only did fans believe their local man had been hard done by, Marsh's failure to hold on to a few crucial catches in the ultimately drawn contest led to his Ashes rivals dubbing him 'Iron Gloves', a sobriquet then picked up by some Australia newspapers.

As chances continued to go begging, public pressure mounted on Marsh who was taunted at subsequent Tests in Melbourne and Sydney but the selectors – perhaps predicting the game's evolution and the role such a dynamic presence might play in it – stuck with him.

That faith was rewarded the following summer when Lillee burst on to the scene with his withering 8-29 against a star-studded World XI at the WACA Ground, with Marsh's childhood spent hurling himself around the backyard in catching practice and his familiarity with the fast-bowler friendly pitch enabling him to play a key supporting role.

When Jeff Thomson emerged to form his lethal new-ball partnership with Lillee for the 1974-75 Ashes summer, the era of all-out pace had arrived prompting the fast-bowling arms race that saw the West Indies rise to power for the next two decades.

It also meant the role of wicketkeeper evolved from neat tidier-upper of bygone days to soccer goalkeeper saves for which Marsh showed himself to be custom-built.

"Geez, that hurt," he famously remarked to the Chappell brothers, Ian and Greg, standing alongside him in Australia's slips cordon after one Thomson thunderbolt thudded into his gloves in the opening Test of that famous 1974-75 Ashes series.

"But I love it."

Image Id: 90E983CA759947509AAC1DC6EE525E33 Image Caption: Marsh, Chappell and Lillee retired after the 1984 Sydney Test // Getty

However, Marsh's reputation for intercepting bouncers above his head and edges to his left and right was the result of far more than a natural ability to somehow lift his sturdy frame off the ground.

Stung by early critiques of his physique, he became an assiduous trainer in addition to his exhaustive keeping drills and was always on the lookout for any technical or equipment innovations to further sharpen his game.

He adopted tailor-made keeping gloves after noticing the snug-fitting gauntlets worn by England rival Alan Knott, and stitched extra lengths of fabric to the back of his playing shirts to prevent them becoming untucked (and a potential distraction) as he hurled himself about.

And in the same 1979-80 Test against England that Lillee unveiled an aluminium bat, Marsh's search for lighter, less obtrusive leg wear led him to slice the top flaps off his keeping pads with a Stanley knife to fashion a prototype of the shin guards wicketkeepers use today.

However, for all his far-sightedness and renown for pursuing the aggressive option to most challenges – including the 44-can beer drinking record he set on Australia's flight to the 1977 Ashes series – Marsh was more a traditionalist than a non-conformist.

Image Id: DC43C347B06E45228C9EC03A0420AE32 Image Caption: Walking out behind Greg Chappell at Trent Bridge in 1977 // Getty

During the 1977 Centenary Test at the MCG, he reportedly carried with him throughout the match a photo of Jack Blackham that had been presented to him by the great grand-niece of Australia's first Test wicketkeeper.

In that game, Marsh memorably insisted Derek Randall be recalled after the England batter was adjudged out to a catch that Marsh knew he had collected on the bounce when the match hung in the balance.

Four years later at the same venue, Marsh was the visible voice of dissent when Greg Chappell instructed younger brother Trevor to bowl underarm against New Zealand, and then cut a sheepish figure as he shook hands with NZ's Bruce Edgar while Australia left the field to howls of derision.

And even though money was miserly for international cricketers in the days when Marsh was regularly forced to take unpaid leave from his school teaching job in Perth, he was not at the forefront of players signing up for Kerry Packer's breakaway competition because of his pride in the Baggy Green Cap.

It was largely out of loyalty to his teammates that he ultimately donned the yellow cap of World Series Cricket, a move that came even though he could rightfully have assumed he would be Australia's next Test captain had he remained with the 'establishment'.

Image Id: F842E2D37B3D45BDB9D02BDE19FC0921 Image Caption: Marsh at The Oval in 1981 // Getty

As events played out, Marsh would never be granted the opportunity to lead his country despite the belief of many – including ex-England skipper Mike Brearley, widely regarded as one of the game's most astute leaders – that he would have excelled in the role.

"I'm surprised that Australia has never made Marsh captain," Brearley observed.

"Tactically he made many shrewd suggestions; publicly combative and privately warm.

"Marsh has always struck me as a man who most cricketers would follow with a will."

Australia's decision to anoint Kim Hughes as Greg Chappell's long-term captaincy successor convinced Marsh he would follow his skipper and Lillee into retirement after the 1983-84 Test series with Pakistan, the same opponent against whom he had scored his country's first Test hundred by a keeper a decade earlier.

But Marsh could no more be separated from cricket than he could return to the piano with his battle-scarred fingers.

He continued playing as an all-rounder – like all wicketkeepers, he fancied himself as a bowler – in Perth's grade competition while working at the WA Institute of Sport, and then as a television commentator before falling foul of Packer for making a less-than-flattering observation about one-day cricket.

In 1990, he took over from Jack Potter as director of the Australian Institute of Sport cricket academy in Adelaide, and brought his keen eye for talent to the finishing school that underpinned Australia's most successful men's team era.

As Marsh later recounted, having witnessed a 16-year-old Ricky Ponting execute a cracking pull shot from the first ball he faced against future Australia quick (now international umpire) Paul Wilson in the winter of 1991, he made a prescient call.

"This bloke will play for Australia," Marsh told his deputy on first sighting of the player who would go on to be his nation's equal-most capped Test representative.

Such was the acclaim he earned in a decade of overseeing Australia's production line of emerging stars, Marsh was lured to England in 2001 where he headed up the old enemy's new cricket academy and was appointed an England men's team selector the following year.

It was in that role that Marsh played a pivotal part in England's still-celebrated 2005 Ashes series win at home, the first time they had held the urn in almost 20 years.

While some queried his decision to aid Australia's oldest and most bitter rival, Marsh bluntly explained his rationale as being in the wider interests of the sport he served.

"When you've been in the game as long as I have, the major interest becomes the game itself," Marsh said at the time, pointing to his adopted team's struggles of decades past.

"Cricket needs a strong England."

Image Id: 0F271CD9EA58448A876745D5E9A7E289 Image Caption: Marsh with then England coach Duncan Fletcher in 2003 // Getty

From England, Marsh went to Dubai as head coach at the ICC's Global Cricket Academy before returning to Adelaide where he served as high performance director at South Australian Cricket Association before being appointed national men's team selector and then chair from 2014-16.

It was late last year that Marsh finally walked away from formal cricket duties when he retired as a SACA board member, with the accompanying acknowledgement he was looking forward to spending even more time on the golf course.

Golf was one of the two pastimes he most enjoyed in the city where he happily told people he and wife Ros had spent more of their lives than they had in their home town of Perth.

His other pre-eminent joy was time spent with sons Daniel, Paul and Jamie, those family get-togethers invariably accompanied by a selection of South Australian red wine and hours of sporting anecdotes.

But it was the lure of cricket, and the opportunity to refresh friendships forged across almost 60 years at the game's elite levels that took Marsh to Bundaberg last week where he suffered the heart attack that would prove fatal.

For that reason, there remains a quiet poignancy amid the sadness of his passing and the celebration of his life.