Australia vs India: Travis Head, the everyman hero that Adelaide feels protective about | Cricket News

Callum Ferguson, who has played 30 ODIs and a Test for Australia, recalls the shuddering moment when he saw his South Australian teammate Travis Head hit a speeding car. It was a decade ago, and Head had just waved to Ferguson outside a pub in Adelaide, and was looking to find his mate’s car when he was hit.“I feared the worst when I reached him. The car had taken an awfully long time to stop and the time I got to Trav, he was unconscious. Frankly, I thought that was it. Luckily, the time the ambulance came, he was conscious though not quite there yet.” Ferguson and his mates took Head to the hospital, and he remembers the moment in the hospital room after the doctors had done their thing. “It’s almost as if nothing had happened. I was still shaking a bit but he went, ‘mate, my head is going to look better now, won’t it?’ He was heavily stitched up, wrapped up in bandages at that point.
“That’s Travis for you, it was a shocking moment, but the kind of guy he is, he found some humour to lighten up. As if he was more worried about us than himself and felt he should put us at ease,” Ferguson recalls.
Not that he needed that life-threatening episode to know about Head. Ferguson remembers the teenager, 10 years younger than him, coming into the South Australian team. “You could see he was a touch rough around the edges, and has become far more polished now, if I could use that word, with his stunningly beautiful home at the Adelaide foothills that overlook the city, but essentially though he is still the same Trav that we used to joke around with. That essentially is why the Australian public too love him: somehow he has retained that larrikin in him, that everyday Australian bloke. He came from a humble neighbourhood in North Adelaide and emerged from a club called ‘Tea Tree Gully’.”
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Lee Matthews, 75, has just returned from batting on a hot day at the picturesque ground at Tea Tree Gully cricket club, north of Adelaide. He removes his white cricket jersey, and sits under a tree, enjoying the veterans’ game between Tea Tree Gully and Goodwood Eastern Rangers club.
Australia’s Travis Head celebrates after scoring a century during the day two of the second cricket test match between Australia and India at the Adelaide Oval in Adelaide, Australia, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/James Els)
Inside the clubhouse, having his lunch, was the curator and the club senior team’s vice-captain Tom Van der Jeugd, who had moved from playing for Kensington club to here a while back. “The best thing about this place is that there are no hierarchies. The senior grade cricketer would talk the same way to the junior team’s kid as he does to his own teammate. I am eagerly awaiting January actually as Travis is throwing a party for the 10th anniversary of our club’s win in league cricket. Knowing Travis, you can never tell what’s going to happen!”
More than a couple of decades ago, when he was just 8, Head would have walked on the same ground, with his mother Ann, to bat at the nets for the first time.
Ann tells a lovely story about it in the local press. How she had had enough about her son pestering her to allow him to go to the club and how one Sunday she took him there, hoping that the club would reject him because of his age. Instead, she was surprised to see her son happily jaunting across to her after his stint at the nets, and the coaches telling her that he can join the colts as he seems good and confident.
It’s the image of Head, the man who bashed the living daylights out of the Indians not just in the Adelaide Test but also during a home series in India last year, last year’s World Test Championship final and the 2023 ODI World Cup decider that Peter Sleep, former Australian spinner and a coach at the Tea Tree Gully club, remembers.
India’s captain Rohit Sharma, left, and Australia’s Travis Head shake hands during the presentation ceremony of the second cricket test match between Australia and India at the Adelaide Oval in Adelaide, Australia. (AP)
“He would have been 10 when I joined the club and he was this very confident kid. And he had that cut shot that the Indians know more than most these days, cutting it from the stumps! Not as powerful but the basics were there.”
Not long after came the first little big moment for the youngster. He was also a wicket-keeper then but Sleep decided to step in. “I had to tell him that there are six batting spots and just one spot for a ‘keeper. Leave the wicket-keeping gloves alone, and focus on batting.”
Young Head, Sleep remembers, was “disappointed”. “You know how kids are, I guess he enjoyed the process of being a wicketkeeper, but as a coach, I had the responsibility to look ahead into the future and give him some direct frank talk. I had to tell him he had to be outstanding as a ‘keeper, but he wasn’t that. But he can be outstanding as a batsman. To his credit, he understood it after a while.”
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It was Sleep who decided to hasten the process of introducing Head into the senior league. He was just 14, the under-16s was an obvious option but Sleep believed the boy was ready to play with the men in senior grade cricket. “With some kids, you can sense that. I had played with Darren Lehmann too and he had played grade cricket at 14-15 years of age. I saw something similar in Head, and pushed. His father Simon was pretty protective, understandably, but he saw my point of view. We had to see how Trav would cope. And you will never know unless you put him in that spot.”
Sleep recalls a specific moment from 4th grade cricket as the time when he was convinced he had made the right decision. “I also played that game with Travis and he hit 30-odd runs. But his demeanour, the shots he played, the courage he showed, and the general sense he gave as if he belonged with that level convinced me. I remember telling him that if he played his cards right, he had the potential to go all the way.”
Australia’s Travis Head celebrates after taking the catch to dismiss India’s Mohammed Siraj during the day three of the second cricket test match between Australia and India at the Adelaide Oval in Adelaide, Australia. (AP)
Going all the way is one thing, but to become a cult hero in South Australia, the home of the Chappell brothers and Lehmann, is another. Or for that matter even across the country. At the Adelaide Oval, in the Test against India, Head received the biggest ovation from the crowd when he walked into bat with the game in the balance. Any Indian who messed with him – be it a stare, a few words or angry gestures like Mohammad Siraj would come up with – were booed. In Adelaide, no one messes with Head.
In the morning, a group of Australian fans had walked into the stadium in black T-shirts with ‘Bring back Boof!’ printed on them, in reference to Lehmann, whose nickname was Boof, a cult hero from South Australia.
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And so we turn to 42-year old Tyson Baird, an occupational therap who incidentally spent six months in Bihar as a volunteer, born and raised in Adelaide, to understand why Head is such a cult hero in these parts.
“He comes across as a teddy bear! To use a cliche, someone who I can see myself having a drink with at a local pub and laughing a lot. He really is the everyday bloke, a larrikin as we call in these parts.”
This impression holds despite Head having a home worth three million dollars in the foothills of the Adelaide hills, plus other properties in the city. Baird laughs. “Oh yes, because we almost feel happy and proud that one of us has made it big. He has never come across as this posh private-school kind of a guy. He is from North Adelaide, not particularly known for rich posh people.”
Australia’s Travis Head is bowled out India’s Mohammed Siraj during the day two of the second cricket test match between Australia and India at the Adelaide Oval in Adelaide, Australia. (AP)
That region, just beyond Head’s neighbourhood, is one of the more lower-income group regions of the city. As one goes further away from Head’s childhood neighbourhood, places like Elizabeth Park, 10-15 kms away from the Tea Tree Gully club, is one of more crime-infested regions of Adelaide.
“He is also a straight shooter. The way he speaks in media interactions. In these times of what seems to be severely-coached cricketers, he speaks his mind. And in our language, the way we speak in our everyday life,” says Baird. “Lehmann was a bit like that. And he is a big legend in these parts. Look, after the Chappells, we really didn’t have too many Test cricketers from these parts. There was Jason Gillespie, Greg Blewett, David Hookes, Lehmann … and then a dry spell. Finally, came our Travis!”
Head’s relationship with Australian fans, particularly in South Australia, is a touch different from what they had with Lehmann. Incidentally, on Sunday night, well past midnight, Lehmann walked into a pub at Hindley street, not far from the ground, and the smiles on the faces of the already punch-drunk patrons was something to savour. There was no stiffness in body language, awe or being starstruck, but lovely warm smiles all around.
With Head, it’s a bit different. “We feel protective about him. Lehmann was the kind of a guy who led the sledges to the opponents, who can be a bit abrasive, who knew what sort of a legend he was to the local public, and what was his stature. With Travis, we feel almost protective. He is mild-mannered and likes to chat but I can’t say it would be fierce sledges. More like a mate in the pub, fooling around,” says Baird.
A sentiment backed Ferguson. “Perfectly put that fan. Heady is like that. I remember this one pre-game incident from a long time ago for South Australia. There was this domestic tournament and different teams had assembled at the airport with their proper team jackets, shoes etc. And I remember Travis walking into our terminal. Not long before that he had become the youngest captain of the South Australian team. And there was our skipper walking in with flip-flops (sandals), and white shirt that you would play a game in. Why? Because he couldn’t find his proper official team gear! Classic Trav! To be fair to him, just like his batting, he didn’t make that kind of make again. He always learns and changes. Though of course it could be a new make he might make!” Ferguson laughs. “You got to love him, wherever you are from.”
Australia’s Travis Head celebrates after scoring a century during the day two of the second cricket test match between Australia and India at the Adelaide Oval in Adelaide, Australia. (AP)
Ferguson also brings up Head’s confrontation with Siraj during the Adelaide Test. “See, after his initial statements to the press, he sought to defuse it the next day”. Head would tell ABC radio how he thought Siraj was a “sweet guy” and it was “time to move on”.
The Adelaide crowd’s reaction also excited Ferguson. “It’s the reaction of a crowd that feels protective about him.” Baird, the cricketing fan, agrees. “It’s not a reaction per se against Siraj, but a reaction towards Head. He raises that kind of sentiment in us. I would say even for a neutral non-Aussie, it would be difficult to dislike him. I would be shocked if the cricketing fraternity doesn’t like him.”
Just like Sunil Gavaskar after Head hit the brilliant game-turning hundred at Adelaide. Before the start of play, when teams were warming up, Gavaskar approached Head to congratulate him. He also pulled out his phone to show him a photograph from his playing days, from a 1980s game against the Australians in India after he had hit a hundred. Allan Border can be seen in the background, and in the front was Gavaskar holding his bat up to acknowledge the crowd’s applause after a hundred. On top of that bat was his sunny floppy hat. In Adelaide, Head would almost repeat the visual, just that he had the helmet instead of the hat. Both cricketers, an Indian legend and an Australian larrikin, would laugh and high-five.