Out of the Wild: Morris vows to intimidate if given Test shot

Lance Morris has a love-hate relationship with the nickname he earned not long after he had moved from country Western Australia to play Premier cricket in the big smoke for Scarborough.

A raw teenager from Dunsborough who bowled like the wind, Morris was part of a development program with the WACA when he wrote his name on a whiteboard to confirm a time for a medical assessment.

"I put my name down. He (a Scarborough teammate) walked in there, scrubbed it off, wrote 'Wild Thing'," Morris told the Unplayable Podcast when asked about the origins of the moniker.

"I walked in the next day to see the doctor and he's like, 'Wild Thing? You wrote that?' And I was like, 'No, I promise I did not write that. I don't call myself the Wild Thing'.

"So from that point, it pretty much stuck.

"I kick up a bit of a stink about it, but the more you resist the more it sticks.

"Ideally, I can shrug that at some point because I honestly do believe that there's there can only be one wild thing – and that's Shaun Tait."

But, just like Tait who earned the label due to his reputation for prioritising pace over accuracy, Morris is not interested in being just like any other fast bowler.

That attitude has brought the 24-year-old to the verge of a Test debut, having spent the last three weeks with the Australian men's team as a squad member following a surprise call-up.

Morris has lit up the Marsh Sheffield Shield in a breakout start to the season, bowling at eye-catching pace and leading all-comers on the competition’s wicket-taking charts.

But even more important than the wickets, among them being Test players Usman Khawaja and Marnus Labuschagne in the same over during a clash at the WACA, has been the buzz that's accompanied his rise suggesting he might be the fastest bowler in the country.

"That's probably a part of my game that has got me this far – being a little bit different," said the right-armer.

"I don't want to be that channel bowler that just bowls outside off all day and waits for the batter to make a mistake.

"I want to get up them a bit and intimidate and blast them out."

It is a method Morris honed during his formative years growing up on a coastal retreat on Australia's west coast in the picturesque Margaret River region, nearly three hours from Perth.

Western Australia pounced on him a few years after he had moved to the capital aged just 17, graduating from the rookie list to make his first-class debut in 2020 as an enforcer in the state side's attack.

His improvement is spelt out in the numbers; after 12 wickets at 37 from five games in his first season, he played every match of WA's drought-breaking Shield title-winning campaign last summer and had 20 victims at 27.

This season he has added a further 27 at just 18.40 from five matches so far this season.

Now he is essentially Australia's Test understudy to their quickest bowler, Mitchell Starc.

Morris, who has refined his bowling action with the help of ex-WA bowling coach Matt Mason, admits he is still coming to grips with it all.

"They see me as a strike bowler and I'm probably that replacement for someone like Mitchell Starc who's bowling fast and intimidating," he said.

"It sounds funny when I say it like that, because I can't believe we're actually in the same sentence to be honest.

"But that's the role that I would come into (if Starc were to miss a Test), I guess.

"It's been a bit of a weird couple of weeks training and staying as ready as possible, knowing that it could happen at some point."

Men's NRMA Insurance Test Series v South Africa

First Test: Australia won by six wickets

Dec 26-30: Second Test, MCG, 10.30am AEDT

Jan 4-8: Third Test, SCG, 10.30am AEDT

Australia squad: Pat Cummins (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey, Cameron Green, Marcus Harris, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Lance Morris, Nathan Lyon, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, David Warner

South Africa squad: Dean Elgar (c), Temba Bavuma, Gerald Coetzee, Theunis de Bruyn, Sarel Eree, Simon Harmer, Marco Jansen, Keshav Maharaj, Heinrich Klaasen, Lungi Ngidi, Anrich Nortje, Kagiso Rabada, Rassie van der Dussen, Kyle Verreynne, Lizaad Williams, Khaya Zondo

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