He was at the inaugural T20 international in Auckland, but 20-year-old Australia A opener Matt Renshaw is anything but the T20 generation’s typical batsman.
Brydon Coverdale28-Jul-2016David Warner, it turns out, is not the first left-handed Australian opener to lose the plot with Joe Root. Not by a good decade or so. Way back, when Root was far too young to enter a Walkabout pub, a young fellow got upset with him – a young fellow who may even become Warner’s batting partner in Tests one day. His name was Matt Renshaw.True, Renshaw was not at the time Australian. He was as English as Queen Elizabeth, though somewhat better at batting. And he got plenty of batting practice, often at the expense of Root, who was five years his senior. Renshaw’s father, Ian, and Root’s dad, Matt, played together in the firsts at Sheffield Collegiate, and the two boys would take the field after play.”We used to play on the outfield after the game, which was a lot of fun,” Renshaw told ESPNcricinfo. “I went back to England in 2014 and I caught up with him and their family for a week or so. One of the first things he said was he never used to get a bat, it was always me. Then, if I got out, I’d start crying. I think I ended up doing most of the batting.”To be fair, Renshaw was young enough that crying was still an acceptable response to being dismissed. By the age of seven, he had moved with his family to New Zealand. When he was nearly 11, the Renshaws moved again, this time to Brisbane, and have been there ever since. Renshaw found a new national identity, and now, at 20, is about to make his Australia A debut.It could easily have worked out differently. Renshaw said he never felt like a New Zealander during his four years there, but England was a different story. He still has a British passport, and when he left on that same trip back home in 2014, he did so with the thought in the back of his mind that pursuing a career in England could be a possibility.”There was a time when I went to England, I wasn’t signed to anyone over here and I was thinking it could be a possibility,” Renshaw said. “But then, a week into my trip there, on my 18th birthday, I got a text from Dad saying Queensland want to sign you on a rookie contract. That made my decision pretty easy.”Queensland knew it was worth investing in Renshaw. He became the youngest batsman to make his first-class debut for Queensland since Martin Love, and in his fifth match he ground out 170, making him the Bulls’ youngest Shield centurion of all time. The previous record-holder, Love, was at that match in Mackay, working as the Queensland physio.”I was in the ice bath and someone came and mentioned that stat,” Renshaw said. “He looked over and gave me the little ‘Lovey’ smile and said ‘you’ve got 30 more to go to beat my overall hundreds’.”One of the most remarkable things about Renshaw’s effort was that, at 19, he had the patience required to bed in on a slow and challenging Mackay pitch. His 170 took nearly nine hours, and featured just seven fours and two sixes. That meant 130 runs had come in a combination of ones, twos and threes.”Growing up, I went to the first Twenty20 match, Australia v New Zealand at Eden Park,” Renshaw said. “Everyone was getting into the Twenty20 mode. But I could never really hit those big balls because of my size. I always loved Test cricket as well.”I’ve got quite good at switching on and off between balls. It’s something I’ve worked on. When I was younger, I wasn’t the biggest player, so the only way I could really score runs was to nurdle them around and try to bat for as long as I could, which I loved.”I’d like to expand. I’ve been doing a lot of work in this off-season,trying to work out my one-day game, and, hopefully, maybe get a game in one-day cricket in the future. But I’ve got my opportunity with longer form cricket, so I don’t want to try and make something in the short form and then lose that longer form.”Renshaw nominates Alastair Cook as the kind of batsman he would like to become. Not surprisingly, he has watched a fair bit of England over the years, given his parentage. His father, a university sports scientist who moved around for work, bought the DVD box set of the 2005 Ashes, which a young Renshaw watched, thinking that one day he might like to play for England.Instead, he has already played for the Australia Under-19s, and, after finishing fifth on the Sheffield Shield run tally last season with 738 at 43.41, this weekend is likely to mark his debut for Australia A in their four-day match against South Africa A in Brisbane. When he first wore the Australian colours, it was not Renshaw, but his parents who found it a little bit strange to see.”I think it was probably harder for Mum and Dad watching me,” he said, “because they’d lived in England their whole life, and then watching me play Under-19s for Australia, they’re like ‘who do I support here?'”