CHENNAI: Mahli Beardman is yet to play a first-class match. The 21-year-old pace sensation from Australia has had bad luck with injuries, including stress fracture which ruled him out for most part of the season earlier this year. Months on since his injury, the Western Australian was back in action, bowling full tilt in Puducherry against India A this week.
While it was his third game since the comeback, he played two one-dayers back home and it did not take long for the pacer to make an impact. Running in and hitting the hard lengths with the new ball, Beardman ran through Prabhsimran Singh, B Sai Sudharsan, and Devdutt Padikkal to put India A on the backfoot — a position they never really recovered from to lose the contest by 125 runs.
What helped him was the research they had done up front on the India A batters. "I think it was just to — without revealing too much — hit the wicket hard, use my pace, obviously, if there's shape there, which there was, to try and use that. From there, just be crafty with what we do with crease angles, how we use the ball, seam positions, things like that. But it was pretty simple, just hold a hard length," the 21-year-old explained after the match on Tuesday.
Having seen the success India pacers had with hard lengths, he did not take long to use the tactics up front. "They had some good success early with the short ball and that was sort of implemented through our innings of trying to do the same, hold a hard length and use a good short ball in it," he added.
Though he bowled only six overs in the match, it was enough for Beardman to outbowl the hosts with the spell of 4/23. Understandably, he was pleased to be back. "It was awesome to be back. It's only my third game back now, so I'm still feeling a little bit underdone, but as I said, it was great to just get out there and compete. I think any time you get to represent your country, regardless of what it's in, it's an absolute honour. So it was awesome to get out there and to get a win in the first game as well," said the 21-year-old.
An ardent fan of Dale Steyn growing up, Beardman, despite being as young as he is, seems to have gotten used to injuries. For him, the road back to the field was understanding the workload his body could take and building on the consistency from thereon. "There's always some worries about whether you're going to get back, but I'm pretty lucky to obviously have the staff here at Cricket Australia and then back at the WACA have been amazing as well," he reflected.
At a time when the Australian Test team is in South Africa — the pace reserves amidst an ageing attack led by Pat Cummins, have come under the scanner — Beardman's return comes as good news. For the youngster, who has played T20Is for Australia, the time he got to spend with the trio of Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood has been immensely insightful.
"Super lucky to have some exposure and experience now around Starcy, Cummo and Hoff. There's been a lot of stuff he's spoken about. Just from a technical standpoint, there have been some little things that Starcy has thrown at me that have been awesome. From there it's just been sort of trying to pick their brain as much as possible on game-play. They've had so much experience and so much success across a long period of time now. They have a way of keeping the game super simple, which I'm lucky enough to be able to tap into," he explained.
