Remembering Deano: freakish, flamboyant, fearless

For all his freakishness and finesse and flamboyance, the cricket deed that would define Dean Jones was as physically confronting as it was spiritually uplifting.

It was amid the hellish heat of India, where 34 years on Jones would prematurely pass, that he played an innings of such astonishing courage and context it is regularly cited as the pivot upon which Australian cricket lifted itself from despair.

The team that Allan Border led to the subcontinent in 1986 had won just three Tests over the preceding two years. It was almost 20 years since Australia had experienced victory in India, due largely to the culture shock and climatic extremes touring parties invariably experienced.

Jones was then aged 25 and had worn the nation's Baggy Green Cap on just two occasions - both against the murderous fast bowlers of the West Indies on their home tracks – for a personal best score of 48.

So the 210 runs he made in more than 500 minutes of batting in the cloying humidity, sapping heat and stifling stench that would waft from the Buckingham Canal oozing past Chennai's M.A. Chidambaram Stadium was revelatory for myriad reasons.

Not least of those were the match's final result – just the second tie in Test cricket's then 109-year history – and the toll it took on the Victorian, who was already recognised through exploits in the one-day arena as being among the game's most pure athletes.

"I'll never forget how, after more than eight hours at the crease, his physical appearance had changed," teammate Steve Waugh recalled in his autobiography.

"He was gaunt and pale in the face and had a vacant expression that suggested he was in serious trouble, his body bordering on completely shutting down."

Waugh sat next to his colleague during the tea break on day two of that Test, with Jones unbeaten on 202 but unable to comprehend what was happening around him and shaking uncontrollably.

Jones would spend that night in hospital hooked up to a saline drip, and the rest of his life reliving that innings.

As one of the great characters and story tellers of world cricket, Jones's willingness to provide a ball-by-ball run down of his career high point became a well-worn schtick to which the man known universally as 'Deano' happily played.

But there was nothing flippant or frivolous about the gravity of that innings, and the history it set in train.

From that tied result and drawn series against the odds in Chennai, Border's team drew such belief and bravado they captured their first one-day World Cup (again on sub continental pitches) a year later.

Image Id: E7EC5F7B359341D09D81735972FDCE4F Image Caption: Jones on the attack in the 1987 World Cup final // Getty

Two years further on, they stormed to their first Ashes triumph in the UK for more than a decade with Jones completing two more centuries and averaging 71 in Tests during that epochal campaign.

Jones was integral to the renaissance of Australian cricket that has remained largely untarnished for more than 30 years.

His irresistible stroke play and frenetic running – whether between the wickets or scampering across the outfield – installed him as the poster boy for the modern game.

With entertainment installed as cricket's primary currency, Deano was a banker.

The Melbourne Cricket Ground would heave to their home-town hero, and around the world he garnered acclaim for his preparedness to take on the game, and those who towered over it.

His stoush with West Indies bowling giant Curtly Ambrose at the SCG in 1993 – in which Jones incensed the Antiguan quick by insisting he remove the white sweat bands from his wrists because they were a distraction to the opposing batter – quickly entered the game's folklore.

In much the same way he feigned weariness when asked to recount his Chennai triumph, the re-appearance of that ill-advised confrontation on social media this week to mark Ambrose's birthday prompted Jones to tweet: 'Oh come on? Again?'.

He then appended: 'Happy birthday big man! Too fast … too good!'

As much as Jones's double-ton in Chennai shone as an illustration of batting craftmanship that was peerless on its day – even across a couple, as at Chennai and his other double-hundred against West Indies at Adelaide in 1989 – the run-in with Ambrose was a thumbnail sketch of his personality.

An impulsively front-foot player at the crease, Dean Jones rarely took a backwards step in all other endeavours.

A passionate Australian and Victorian who championed the cause of his nation and his state at every opportunity, he became a similarly fearless commentator in broadcast and print after calling time on a 16-year playing life that yielded 52 Tests, 164 one-day internationals and almost 20,000 first-class runs.

In more recent years, Jones earned accolades and trophies as a coach in the Pakistan Super League competition, leading Islamabad United to two titles before joining Karachi Kings last year.

His willingness to engage with fans, whether they agreed with his views or were spoiling for an argument, made him a natural media talent underpinned by a philosophy he succinctly articulated earlier this year.

"We play a game that when you make a mistake everyone's got an opinion on you and after a while it wears on you, but you get the hide of an armadillo after a while and you don't get a glass jaw," Jones said as a guest on Shane Watson's podcast 'Lessons Learnt with the Greats'.

"If something goes wrong, don't panic; find a way.

"You need to get whacked on the nose a few times, and I did.

"Like a diamond, it needs pressure. 

"You just can't go through life wanting an easy way."

On the cricket field, Jones could shine like that diamond.

Throughout a life larger than most, he rarely opted for that simple path.

Those innate qualities fused across two enervating days at Chidambaram Stadium in 1986 when Dean Jones stood alone, and triumphed against forces that few who did not bear witness will ever quite comprehend.

His story will endure. Even without Deano's constant, self-deprecating re-telling.