Doug Walters had a balanced view of batting, cricket and life in general.
That is why Kevin Mitchell likes him
It is not because we share a first name or even that we grew up 30 miles apart. It is not because he was born on December 21 and I was born three days later. Nor is it because, at different times, we both played for the same junior club, run by the local police, on bouncy concrete wickets and under a blazing sun, in shorts and T-shirts and without cream or hat.
It is not because we were both in the ballot for National Service during the Vietnam war – he was drafted, I was not.
No, the reason Kevin Douglas Walters is my favourite cricketer is the way he walks.
You can tell a lot about people from their gait. Walters ambles, rolling on the outsides of his feet, ever so slightly bow-legged, back ram-rod straight, a man who knows where he is going but is in no particular hurry to get there. His is a country walk, not a city dash. It describes his balanced attitude to the game he was so good at.
And that is what we all loved about Doug. It was not that he did not care; anyone burdened with being called the new Bradman could hardly escape the responsibility of delivering on the talent given to him. But he did not care to the point where it changed him.
He was always the boy from Dungog. No doubt he still is.
It was inevitable growing up in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales in the 1950s and ’60s that anyone addicted to cricket would regard Doug Walters as the champion of our times and attitudes.
Those were the days before car seat-belts and bicycle helmets, when it was OK to fall out of a tree and break your arm or go to the beach and get burnt to a crisp. They were times of unregulated fun.
And that is how Doug batted. In fact he was not a batsman to start with. From memory his days as a skinny kid in the Maitland and District Police Citizens Boys Club team were as a bowler who batted down the order.
Whatever he did, though, he did it brilliantly. When he did start to take his batting seriously, the runs flowed, not in a violent way but cleverly. Throughout his Test career Walters got his runs with deft placement and forceful hitting to all parts, pulling and cutting, the shots that live in the memories that we have of Bradman, too. Three times he got a hundred in a session in Tests, most memorably when he pulled Bob Willis for six off the last ball of the day at Perth.
It is said he lost some of his good years to the Army, called up in the mid-’60s when Australia’s commitment to America’s war in Vietnam was not the most popular game in town. He might have lost the chance to rack up some scores but I doubt the two years out blunted his skills at all.
There are several myths about Walters and one of them concerns his alleged nickname of that time, Hanoi. It was given him, it is said, because he was in Vietnam and used to get bombed every night. Well, Doug never went to Vietnam and his enthusiasm for beer was very much in its nursery stage then. Good story, though.
It says much about Walters that he takes in his country stride the conspiracy theory that he was drafted not because his number came up in the ballot but because he was a famous young sportsman whose presence in the Army would bolster the war effort.
He grew up in deferential times and was always respectful of authority – but only up to a point. Walters was one of the Australian team’s best practical jokers and took delight in gently winding up po-faced officials.
His humour was not cruel, though. It was not in his nature but he did figure there was no point taking yourself too seriously.
Freddie (his real nickname, along with Bikki, the origins of which are tediously convoluted), indulged in all the obvious pleasures a young Australian male of his generation was brought up on. He drank, played cards, gambled on the horses – and still does.
Famously, Doug drank 44 cans of beer on the flight from Sydney to London on the 1977 Ashes tour. It was regarded at the time as no more than harmless fun; in subsequent assaults on the record, though, the team management frowned on the practice.
It was not as if Freddie got outrageously drunk during that aerial lager marathon, though. As he said, and as friends will testify, he rarely got roaring drunk. Beer to Doug was something to be savoured quietly and over time. “I was always a bit of a sipper,” he said.
It would be wrong to regard Walters as naïve – as anyone who has played cards with him would probably agree. He was quietly astute, undemonstrative but with a shrewd cricket brain.
His average of 48 was fine by him. He never mastered the moving ball on tours of England but was devastating against West Indies in conditions that suited his free hitting. Always a straight talker, he remarked once that players such as Steve Waugh cared too much about getting their average above 50. To Doug (and Steve’s brother, Mark, a punting pal of Doug’s), it was just a number.
Above all Walters was able to keep life in perspective. Maybe that is because he grew up in less complicated times. Whatever the reason, he had no problem articulating his philosophy.
“I enjoy life, mate,” he said once. “I think you’re dead a long while – that’s what I was told and I haven’t seen any proof of that not being right.”
KEVIN MITCHELL writes for the Observer Sport Monthly and is a columnist for The Wisden Cricketer